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Artists and Arabs ; 



OR, 



SKETCHING IN SUNSHINE. 



BY 



HENRY BLACKBURN, 

AUTHOR OF "NORMANDY PICTURESQUE," " ART IN THE MOUNTAINS,' 
"TRAVELLING IN SPAIN," "THE PYRENEES," ETC. 

S2Ettfj Numerous Illustrations, 




BOSTON: 

ESTES AND LAURTAT, 

301 Washington Street. 

1878. 



I *«»M<<fc*'V* 



k. 



.«,*«««> *'«•»• • < 



AUTHOR'S EDITION. 



University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



WITHDRAWN 

MAY 9 1919 

PUBLIC LIBRAET 
WASMlKQtON, - D. C. 

2T T B IT T ff , 



Chapter 

I. Ox the Wing .... 


. 


Page 
13 


II. 


Algiers 


27 


III. 


The Moorish Quarter. — Our Studio 


51 


IV. 


" Models " 


73 


V. 


Our " Life School m 


95 


VI. 


The Bouzareah. — A Storm . 


115 


VII. 


Blidah.— Medeah. — The Atlas Mountains 


143 


VIII. 


Kabylia. — The Fort Napoleon . 


171 


IX. 


"Winter Swallows" 


199 


X. 


Conclusion .... 


• . 


211 






/Public Library, \ 

RECEIVED, 










OCT 3 01906 










^v WasHington.D.O, f 







LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

■ ♦ 

La Fille du Corsaire Page 26 

The Moorish Quarter 50 

Models 72 

A Portrait 91 

Our "Life School" 94 

Aloes and Palms 114 

Old Moorish Screen 121 

Over the Sea 124 

Palms 130 

Arabs 142 

Kabyles 170 

The Mountains of Kabylia . . . . 183 

Winter Swallows 198 

Conclusion 210 



ARGUMENT. 

The advantage of winter studios in the South, 
and the value of sketching in the open air, espe- 
cially in Algeria. 



" The best thing the author of a book can do, is to tell the reader, on 
a piece of paper an inch square, what he means by it." — Athenceum. 




%^%M 'WA 




ARTISTS AND ARABS. 



CHAPTEE I. 



ON THE WING. 

BY the middle of the month of July the 
Art season in London was on the wane, 
and by the end of August the great body of 
English artists had dispersed, some, the soundest 
workers perhaps, to the neighborhood of Welsh 
mountains and English homesteads, to "the 
silence of thatched cottages and the voices of 
blossoming fields." 

From the Tweed to the Shetland Isles they 
were thick upon the hills ; in every nook and 
corner of England, amongst the cornfields and 



14 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

upon the lakes ; in the valleys and torrent beds 
of Wales, the cry was still " they come." 

On the continent of Europe both artists and 
amateurs were everywhere. Smith, toiling across 
the Campagna with the thermometer at 90, his 
reward a quiet pipe at the " cafe Grecco " when 
the sun goes down, is but a counterpart of a hun- 
dred other Smiths scattered abroad. In the gal- 
leries of Florence and Eome no more easels could 
be admitted, and in Switzerland and Savoy the 
little white tents and sun-umbrellas glistened on 
the mountain-side. Brown might be seen rattling 
down an arrete from the Flegere, with his materiel 
swung across his back like a carpenter's basket, 
after a hard day's work sketching the Aiguilles that 
tower above the valley of Chamounix ; and Jones, 
with his little wife beside him, sitting under the 
deep shade of the beech-trees in the valley of Sixt. 

"We were a sketching party, consisting of two, 
three, or four, according to convenience or accident, 



ITALIAN LAKES. 15 

wandering about and pitching our tent in various 
places away from the track of tourists ; we had 
been spending most of the summer days in the 
beautiful Val d'Aosta (that school for realistic 
work that a great teacher once selected for his 
pupil, giving him three months to study its chest- 
nut groves, "to brace his mind to a comprehen- 
sion of facts ") ; we had prolonged the summer 
far into autumn on the north shore of the Lago 
Maggiore, where from the heights above the old 
towns of Intra and Pallanza we had watched its 
banks turn from green to golden and from gold 
to russet brown. The mountains were no longer 
en toilette, as the French express it, and the vine- 
yards were stripped of their purple bloom ; the 
wind had come down from the Simplon in sudden 
and determined gusts, and Monte Eosa no longer 
stood alone in her robe of white ; the last visitor 
had left the Hotel de TUnivers at Pallanza, and 
our host was glad to entertain us at the rate of 



16 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

four francs a day " tout conipris," — when the 
question came to us, as it does to so many other 
wanderers in Europe towards the end of October, 
where to go for winter quarters, where to steal 
yet a further term of summer days. 

Should we go again to Spain to study Yelasquez 
and Murillo, should we go as usual to Rome, or 
should we strike out a new path altogether and 
go to Trebizond, Cairo, Tunis, or Algeria] There 
was no agreeing on the matter, diversity of opinion 
was great and discussion ran high (the majority, 
we must own, having leanings towards Eome and 
chic, and also "because there would be more 
fun ") ; so, like true Bohemians, we tossed for 
places and the lot fell upon Algeria. 

The next morning we are on the way. Trust- 
ing ourselves to one of those frail-looking little 
boats with white awnings, that form a feature in 
every picture of Italian lake-scenery, and which, 
in their peculiar motion and method of propulsion 






ITALIAN LAKES. 17 

(the rower standing at the stern and facing his 
-work), bear just sufficient resemblance to the 
Venetian gondola to make us chafe a little at 
the slow progress we make through the water, 
we sit and watch the receding towers of Pallanza, 
as it seems, for the livelong day. There is noth- 
ing to relieve the monotony of motion, and scarcely 
a sound to break the stillness, until we approach 
the southern shore, and it becomes a question of 
anxiety as to whether we shall really reach Arona 
before sundown. But the old boatman is not to 
be moved by any expostulation or entreaty, nor 
is he at all affected by the information that we 
run great risk of losing the last train from Arona ; 
and so we are spooned across the great deep lake at 
the rate of two or three miles an hour, and glide 
into the harbor with six inches of water on the 
flat bottom of the boat amongst our portmanteaus. 
From Arona to Genoa by railway, and from 
Genoa to Xice by the Cornice road, — that most 



18 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

beautiful of all drives, where every variety of 
grandeur and loveliness of view, both by sea and 
land, seems combined, and from the heights of 
which, if we look seaward and scan the southern 
horizon, we can sometimes trace an irregular dark 
line, which is Corsica, — past Mentone and Nice, 
where the " winter swallows " are arriving fast, 
making a wonderful flutter in their nests, all eager- 
ness to obtain the most comfortable quarters, and 
all anxiety to have none but " desirable " swallows 
for neighbors. This last is a serious matter, this 
settling down for the winter at Nice, for it is here 
that the swallows choose their mates, pairing off 
quietly in the springtime, — who knows whither ] 
A few hours' journey by railway and we are 
at Marseilles, where (especially at the " Grand 
Hotel ") it is an understood and settled thing that 
every Englishman is on his way to Italy or India. 
It requires considerable perseverance to impress 
upon the attendants that the steamer which sails 



MARSEILLES, 19 



at noon for Algiers is the one on which our bag- 
gage is to be placed, and it is almost impossible 
to persuade the driver of a fiacre that we do not 
want to go by the boat just starting for Civita 
Vecchia or Leghorn. 

On stepping on board the Ahhbar it almost 
seems as if there were some mistake, for we ap L 
pear to be the only passengers on the after-deck, 
and are looked upon with some curiosity by the 
swarthy, half-naked crew, who talk together in 
an unknown tongue. We have several hours to 
wait and to look about us, for the mail is not 
brought on board until three in the afternoon, 
and it is at least half past before the officials 
have kissed each other on both cheeks, and we 
are really moving off, — threading our way with 
difficulty through the mass of shipping which 
hems us in on all sides. 

The foredeck of the Akhbar is one mass of con- 
fusion and crowding, but the eye soon detects 



20 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

the first blush of Oriental color and costume, and 
it is easy to distinguish a white bournous moving 
in a stately manner through the crowd. There 
are plenty of Zouaves in undress uniforms, chiefly 
young men, with a superfluity of medals, and the 
peculiar swagger which seems inseparable from this 
costume ; others old and bronzed, who have been 
to Europe on leave, and are returning to join their 
regiments. Some parting scenes we witness be- 
tween families of the peasant order, of whom there 
appear to be a number on board. These, one and 
all, take leave of each other with a significant " au 
re voir," which is the key-note to the whole busi- 
ness, and tells us (who have no wish or intention 
to trouble the reader with the history or prospects 
of the colony) the secret of its ill-success, viz. : 
that these colonists intend to come back, and that 
they are much too near home in Algeria. 

Looking down upon the foredeck, as we leave 
the harbor of Marseilles, there seems scarcely an 



MARSEILLES. 21 



available inch of space that is not encumbered 
with bales and goods of all kinds ; with heaps 
of rope and chain, military stores, piles of arms, 
cavalry-horses, sheep, pigs, and a prodigious num- 
ber of live fowls. On the after-deck there are but 
six passengers besides ourselves : there is a Moorish 
Jew talking fluently with a French commercial 
traveller, a sad and silent officer of Chasseurs with 
his young wife, and two lieutenants who chatter 
away with the captain ; the latter, in consider- 
ation of his rank as an officer in the Imperial 
Marine, leaving the mate to take charge of the 
vessel during the entire voyage. This gentleman 
seems to the uninitiated to be a curious encum- 
brance, and to pass his time in conversation, in 
sleep, and in the consumption of bad cigars. He 
is "a disappointed man" of course, as all naval 
officers are, of whatever nation, age, or degree. 

The voyage averages forty-eight hours, but is 
often accomplished in less time on the southward 



22 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

journey. It is an uncomfortable period even in 
fine weather, just too long for a pleasure-trip, and 
just too short to settle down and make up one's 
mind to it, as in crossing the Atlantic. Our boat 
is an old Scotch " screw," which has been lent 
to the Company of the Messageries Imperiales for 
winter duty, — the shaft hammering and vibrating 
through the saloon and after-cabins incessantly 
for the first twenty-four hours, whilst she labors 
against a cross-sea in the Gulf of Lyons. About 
noon on the next day it becomes calm, and the 
Akhbar steams quietly between the Balearic Islands, 
close enough for us to distinguish one or two 
churches and white houses, and a square erection 
that a fellow-traveller informs us is the work of 
the "Majorca Land, Compagnie Anglaise." 

In the following little sketch we have indicated 
the appearance in outline of the two islands of 
Majorca and Minorca as we approach them going 
southward, passing at about equal distances be- 
tween the islands. 



MAJORCA AND MINORCA. 



23 



The sea is calm and the sky is bright as we 
leave the islands behind us, and the Alchbar seems 
to plough more easily through the deep .|l|| w 
blue water, leaving a wake of at least 
a mile, and another wake in the sky 
of sea-gulls, who follow us for the 
rest of the voyage in a graceful un- 
dulating line, sleeping on the riggino* 
at night unmolested by the crew, 
who believe in the good omen. 

On the second morning on coming 
on deck we find ourselves in the 
tropics; the sky is a deep azure, the 
heat is intense, and the brightness of 
everything is wonderful. The sun's 
rays pour down on the vessel, and 
their effect on the occupants of the 
foredeck is curious to witness. The 
odd heaps of clothing that had lain almost un- 
noticed during the voyage suddenly come to life, 



24 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

and here and there a dark visage peeps from under 
a tarpaulin, from the inside of a coil of rope, or 
from a box of chain. Soon the whole vessel, both 
the fore and after deck, is teeming with life, and 
we find at least double the number of human 
beings on board that we had had any idea of at 
starting. 

But the interest of every one is now centred 
on a low dark line of coast, with a background 
of mountains, which every minute becomes more 
defined ; and we watch it until we can discern 
one or two of the highest peaks, tipped with snow. 
Soon we can make out a bright green, or rather, 
as it seems in the sunlight, a golden shore, set 
with a single gem that sparkles in the water. 
Again it changes into the aspect of a white pyra- 
mid or triangle of chalk resting on the sea ; next,: 
into an irregular mass of houses with flat roofs,, 
and mosques with ornamented towers and cupolas, , 
surrounded and surmounted by grim fortifications^, 



THE AFRICAN SHORE. 25 

which are not Moorish ; and in a little while we 
can distinguish the French houses and hotels, a 
Place, a modern harbor and lighthouse, docks, and 
French shipping, and one piratical-looking craft 
that passes close under our bows, manned by dark 
sailors with bright red sashes and large ear-rings, 
dressed like the fishermen in the opera of Masa- 
niello. And whilst we are watching and taking 
it all in, we have glided to our moorings, close 
under the walls of the great Mosque (part of which 
we have sketched from this very point of view) ; 
and are surrounded by a swarm of half-naked, 
half-wild, and frantic figures, who rush into the 
water vociferating and imploring us, in languages 
difficult to understand, to be permitted to carry 
the Franks' baggage to the shore. 

Taking the first that comes, we are soon at the 
landing-steps and beset by a crowd of beggars, 
touters, idlers, and nondescripts of nearly every 
nation and creed under heaven. 




LA FILLE DU CORSAIRE. 



CHAPTEE II. 

ALGIERS. 

u Ah oui, c'est qu'elle est belle avec ces chateaux forts, 
Couches dans les pres verts, comme les geants morts ! 
C'est qu'elle est noble, Alger la fille du corsaire ! 
Un reseau de murs blancs la protege et 1'enserre." 

THE first view of the town of Algiers, with 
its clusters of white houses set in bright 
green hills, — or, as the French express it, " like a 
diamond set in emeralds," the range of the lesser 
Atlas forming a background of purple waves ris- 
ing one above the other until they are lost in 
cloud, — was perhaps the most beautiful sight 
we had witnessed, and it is as well to record 
it at once, lest the experience of the next few 
hours might banish it from memory. 



28 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

It was a good beginning to have a stately bare- 
footed Arab to shoulder our baggage from the port, 
and wonderful to see the load he carried unas- 
sisted. As he winds his way through the narrow 
and steep slippery streets (whilst we who are shod 
by Hoby and otherwise encumbered by broadcloth 
have enough to do to keep pace with him, and 
indeed to keep our footing), it is good to see how 
nobly our Arab bears his load, how beautifully 
balanced is his lithe figure, and with what grace 
and ease he stalks along. As he bows slightly, 
when taking our three francs (his "tariff" as he 
calls it), there is a dignity in his manner, and a 
composure about him that is almost embarrassing. 
How he came, in the course of circumstances, to j 
be carrying our luggage instead of wandering with 
his tribe, perhaps civilization — French civiliza- 
tion — can answer. 

The first hurried glance (as we followed our J 
cicerone up the landing-steps to a large French 



ALGIERS. 29 



hotel facing the sea) at the dazzlingly white flat- 
roofed houses without windows, at the mosques 
with their gayly painted towers, at the palm-trees 
and orange-trees, and at the crowd of miscellaneous 
costumes, in which bright colors preponderated, 
gave the impression of a thorough Mohammedan 
city ; and now as we walk down to the Place and 
look about us at leisure, we find to our astonish- 
ment and delight that the Oriental element is still 
most prominent. 

The most striking and bewildering thing is un- 
doubtedly the medley that meets the eye every- 
where : the conflict of races, the contrast of colors, 
the extraordinary brightness of everything, the 
glare, the strange sounds and scenes that cannot 
be easily taken in at a first visit ; the variety of 
languages heard at the same time, and above all 
the striking beauty of some faces, and the luxu- 
rious richness of costume. 

First in splendor come the Moors (traders look- 



30 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

ing like princes), promenading or lounging about 
under the trees, looking as important and as richly 
attired as ever was Caliph Haroun Alraschid. 
They are generally fair and slight of figure, with 
false, effeminate faces, closely shaven heads covered 
with fez and turban, loose baggy white trousers, and 
jacket and vest of blue or crimson cloth embroi- 
dered with gold ; round their waists are rich silken 
sashes, and their fingers are covered with a pro- 
fusion of rings. Their legs are bare to the knee, 
and their feet are enclosed in Turkish slippers. 

This is the prominent town type of Moor or 
Jew, the latter to be distinguished by wearing 
dark trousers, clean white stockings, French shoes, 
and a round cloth cap of European pattern. There 
are various grades, both of the Moors and Jews, 
some of course shabby and dirty enough ; but the 
most dignified and picturesque figures are the tall 
dark Arabs and the Kabyles, remarkable for their 
independent, noble bearing, their flowing white 



THE "PLACE ROYALE." 31 

bournouses, and their turbans of camel's hair. 
Here we see them walking side by side with their 
conquerors in full military uniform and with their 
conquerors' wives in the uniform of Le Follet, 
whilst white-robed female figures flit about closely 
veiled, and Marabouts (the Mohammedan priests) 
also promenade in their flowing robes. Arab 
women and children lounge about selling fruit or 
begging furtively, and others hurry to and fro 
carrying burdens; and everywhere and ever pres- 
ent in this motley throng, the black frock-coat 
and chimney-pot of civilization assert themselves, 
to remind us of what we might otherwise soon be 
forgetting, — that we are but four days' journey 
from England. 

There is noise enough altogether on the Place 
to bewilder any stranger ; for besides the talking 
and singing, and the cries of vendors of fruit and 
wares, there is considerable traffic. Close to us 
as we sit under the trees (so close as almost to 



32 ARTISTS AND ARABS, 

upset the little tables in front of the cafes), and 
without any warning, a huge diligence conies 
lunging on to the Place, groaning under a pile 
of merchandise, with a bevy of Arabs on the roof, 
and a party of Moorish women in the " rotonde " ; 
presently there passes a company of Zouaves at 
quick step, looking hot and dusty enough, march- 
ing to their terrible tattoo ; and next, by way of 
contrast again, come two Arab women with their 
children, mounted on camels, the beasts looking 
overworked and sulky, as they edge their way 
through the crowd with the greatest nonchalance, 
and with an impatient croaking sound go sham- 
bling past. 

The " Place Eoyale " faces the north, and is en- 
closed on three sides with modern French houses 
with arcades and shops, the contents of which are 
principally French. Xext door to a bonnet-shop 
there is certainly the name of Mustapha over the 
door, and in the window are pipes, coral, and 



THE "PLACE ROYALE." 33 

filagree work exposed for sale ; but most of the 
goods come from France. !Xext door again is a 
French cafe, where Arabs, who can afford it, de- 
light in being waited upon by their conquerors 
in white aprons and neckties. The background 
of all this is superb : a calm sunlit sea, white 
sails glittering and flashing, and far to the east- 
ward a noble bay, with the Kabyle mountains 
stretching out their arms towards the north. 

At four o'clock the band plays on the Place, 
and as we sit and watch the groups of Arabs 
and Moors listening attentively to the overture 
to " William Tell," or admiringly examining 
the gay uniforms and medals of the Chasseurs 
d'Afrique ; as we see the children of both nations 
at high romps together; as the sweet sea-breeze 
that fans us so gently bears into the newly con- 
structed harbour together a corveHe of the French 
Marine anjra susmggJ^rt^gyng raking craft with 

latteen sai|s; a^Aftir<^]i*tt^)^[uestitan statue of 
2* 

WagUBLg ton f D k O l 



34 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

the Duke of Orleans and a mosque stand side 
by side before us, — we have Algiers presented to 
us in the easiest way imaginable, and, without 
going through the ordeal of studying its history 
or statistics, obtain some idea of the general aspect 
of the place and the people, and of the relative 
position of conquerors and conquered. 

As our business is principally with the Moorish, 
or picturesque side of things, let us first look at 
the great Mosque which we glanced at as we 
entered the harbor. Built close to the water's 
edge, so close that the Mediterranean waves are 
sapping its foundations, with plain white shining 
walls, nearly destitute of exterior ornament, it is 
perhaps the most perfect example of strength and 
beauty, and of fitness and grace of line, that we 
shall see in any building of this type.* It is 

* This beautiful architectural feature of the town has not ' 
escaped the civilizing hand of the Frank ; the last time we 
visited Algiers we found the oval window in the tower gone, 
and in its place an illuminated French clock! 



TEE GREAT MOSQUE. 35 

thoroughly Moorish in style, although built by a 
Christian, if we may believe the story, of which 
there are several versions : how the Moors in old 
days took captive a Christian architect, and prom- 
ised him his liberty on condition of his build- 
ing them a mosque ; how he, true to his own 
creed, dexterously introduced into the ground plan 
the form of a cross ; and how the Moors, true also 
to their promise, gave him his liberty indeed, but 
at the cannon's mouth through a window, seaward. 
The general outline of these mosques is familiar 
to most readers, the square white walls pierced at 
intervals with narrow little windows, the flat cu- 
pola, or dome, and the square tower often standing 
apart from the rest of the structure like an Ital- 
ian campanile, as in the illustration given on page 
124. Some of these towers are richly decorated 
with arabesque ornamentation, and glitter in the 
sun with color and gilding; but exterior decora- 
tion is quite the exception, the majority of the 



36 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

mosques being as plain and simple in design as 
in our illustration. 

Here, if we take off our shoes, we may enter 
and hear the Koran read, and we may kneel 
down to pray with Arabs and Moors ; religious 
tolerance is equally exercised by both creeds. 
Altogether the Mohammedan places of worship 
seem by far the most prominent, and although 
there is a Roman Catholic church and buildings 
held by other denominations of Christians, there 
is none of that predominant proselytizing aspect 
which we might have expected after thirty years' 
occupation by the French. At Tetuan, for in- 
stance, where the proportion of Christians to 
Mohammedans is certainly smaller, the " Catholic 
church " rears its head much more conspicuously. 
In Algiers the priestly element is undoubtedly 
active, and Soeurs de Charite are to be see: 



« 



everywhere, but the buildings that first strike 
the eye are mosques rather than churches ; the 



THE GREAT MOSQUE. 37 

sounds that become more familiar to the ear than 
peals of bells are the Muezzins' morning and 
evening salutation from the tower of a mosque, 
calling upon all true believers to 

" Come to prayers, come to prayers, 
It is better to pray than to sleep. " 

The principal streets in Algiers lead east and 
west from the Place to the principal gates, the 
Bab-Azoun and the Bab-el-Oued. They are for 
the most part French, with arcades like the 
Bue de Bivoli in Paris; many of the houses are 
lofty, and built in the style best known in Europe 
as the " Haussman." Nearly all the upper town 
is Moorish, and is approached by narrow streets 
or lanes, steep, slippery, and tortuous, which we 
shall examine by and by.* 

The names of some of the streets are curious, 

* It may be interesting to artists to learn that in this 
present year, 1873, many of the quaintest old Moorish streets 
and buildings are intact ; neither disturbed by earthquakes 
nor " improved " out of sight. 



38 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

and suggestive of change. Thus we see the 
" Rue Royale," the " Rue Imperiale " ; there is a 
" Place Rationale," and one street is still boldly 
proclaimed to be the " Rue de la Revolution " ! 

In passing through the French quarter, through 
the new wide streets, squares, and inevitable bou- 
levards, the number of shops for fancy goods and 
Parisian wares, especially those of hair-dressers 
and modistes, seems rather extraordinary, remem- 
bering that the entire European population of 
Algeria, agricultural as well as urban, is not more 
than 150,000. In a few shops there are tickets 
displayed in different languages, but linguists are 
rare, and where there are announcements of 
the labels have generally a perplexing, 



INGUS 
SPOKEN. 



composite character, like the inscription on a 
statue at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, which 
ran thus, " Miss Ofelia dans Amlet." 

Let us now glance at the general mode of liv- 
ing in Algiers, speaking first of "the traveller who 



THE MOSQUES. 39> 



goes to the hotels. The ordinary visitor of a 
month or two will drop down pleasantly enough 
into the system of hotel life in Algiers ; and even 
if staying for the winter he will probably find it 
more convenient and amusing to take his, meals 
in French fashion at the hotels, ringing the 
changes between three or four of the best, and 
one or two well-known cafes. Thero is gener- 
ally no table-d'hote, but strangers can walk in 
and have breakfast or dine very comfortably at 
little tables " ct part" at fixed hours, at a moder- 
ate price. The rooms are pleasant, cool, and airy, 
with large windows open to the* sea. Everything 
is neatly and quietly served, the menu is varied 
enough, with good French dishes and game in 
abundance ; the hosts being especially liberal in 
providing those delicious little birds that might 
be larks or quails, which in Algiers we see so 
often at table and so seldom on the wing. 
Half the people that are dining at the " Hotel 



40 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

d'Orient " to-day are residents or habitues ; they 
come in and take their accustomed places as 
coseyly, and are almost as particular and fastidious 
as if they were at their club. There is the colonel 
of a cavalry regiment dining alone, and within 
joking distance five young officers, whose various 
grades of rank are almost as evident from their 
manner as from the number of stripes on their 
bright red kepis ranged on the wall of the salon. 
A French doctor and his wife dine vis-a-vis at 
one table, a lady solitaire at another, and some 
gentlemen, whose minds are tuned to commerce, 
chatter in a corner by themselves ; whilst a group 
of newly arrived English people in the middle of 
the room are busily engaged in putting down the 
various questions with which they intend to bore 
the vice-consul on the morrow, as if he were some 
good-natured house-agent, valet-de-place, and in- 
terpreter in one, placed here by Providence for 
their especial behoof. But it is all very orderly, 



HOTEL LIFE. 41 



sociable, and comfortable, and by no means an 
unpleasant method of living for a time. 

There is the cercle, the club, at which we may 
dine sometimes ; there are those pretty little villas 
amongst the orange-trees at Mustapha Superieure, 
where we may spend • the most delightful even- 
ings of all ; and there are also the Governor's 
weekly balls, soirees at the consulate, and other 
pleasant devices for turning night into day, in 
Algiers as everywhere else, which we shall be 
wise if we join in but sparingly ; and there are 
public amusements, concerts, balls, and the theatre, 
— the latter with a company of operatic singers 
with weak lungs, but voices as sweet as any heard 
in Italy; and there are the moonlight walks by 
the sea, to many the greatest delight of all. 

The ordinary daily occupations are decidedly 
social and domestic ; and it may be truly said 
that for a stranger, until he becomes accustomed 
to the place, there is very little going on. You 



42 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

must not bathe, for instance, on this beautiful 
shelving shore. " Nobody bathes, it gives fever," 
was the invariable answer to inquiries on this 
subject ; and, though it is not absolutely forbidden 
by the faculty, there are so many restrictions im- 
posed upon bathers that few attempt it ; more- 
over, an Englishman is not likely to have brought 
an acrobatic suit with him, nor will he easily find 
a " costume de bain " in Algiers. 

There is very little to do besides wander about 
the town, or make excursions in the environs or 
into the interior, in which latter case it is as well 
to take a fowling-piece, as there is plenty of game 
to be met with ; and altogether we may answer 
a question often asked about Algiers as to its 
attractions for visitors, that it has not many (so 
called) for the mere holiday lounger. But for 
those who have resources of their own, who have 
work to do which they wish to do quietly, and 
who breathe more freely under a bright blue sky, 
Algiers seems to us to be the place to come to. 



LIFE IN ALGIERS. 43 

The "bird of passage," who has unfortunately 
missed an earthquake, often reports that Algiers 
is a little dull; but even he should not find it 
so, for, beyond the " distractions " we have hinted 
at, there is plenty to amuse him if he care little 
for what is picturesque. There are (or were when 
we were there) a troop of performing Arabs of 
the tribe of " Beni Zouzoug," who performed 
nightly the most hideous atrocities in the name 
of religious rites : wounding their wretched limbs 
with knives, eating glass, holding burning coals 
in their mouths, standing on hot iron until the 
feet frizzled and gave forth sickening odors, and 
doing other things in an ecstasy of religious 
frenzy which we could not print, and which 
would scarcely be believed in if we did.* 

There are various Moorish ceremonies to be 

* Since writing the above, we observe that these Arabs 
(or a band of mountebanks in their name) have been per- 
mitted to perform their horrible orgies in Paris and London, 
and that young ladies go in evening dress to the " stalls " 
to witness them. 



44 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

witnessed. There are the sacrifices at the time 
of the Ramadhan, when the negro priestesses go 
down to the water side and offer up beasts and 
birds ; the victims, after prolonged agonies which 
crowds assemble to witness, being finally handed 
over to a French chef de cuisine. There, are the 
mosques, to be entered barefoot, and the native 
courts of law to be seen. Then, if possible, a 
Moor should be visited at home, and a glimpse 
obtained of his domestic economy, including a 
dinner without knives or forks. 

An entertainment consisting entirely of Moor- 
ish dances and music is easily got up, and is one 
of the characteristic sights of Algiers. • The young 
trained dancing-girls, urged on to frenzy by the 
beating of the tom-tom, and falling exhausted at 
last into the arms of their masters, dancing with 
that monotonous motion peculiar to the East, the 
body swaying to and fro without moving the feet, 
the uncouth, wild airs they sing, their shrieks 



MOORISH DANCES. 45 

dying away into a sigh or moan, will not soon be 
forgotten, and many other scenes of a like nature, 
on which we must not dwell, — for are they not 
written in twenty books on Algeria already] 

But there are two sights which are seldom 
mentioned by other writers, which we must just 
allude to in passing. The Arab races, which take 
place in the autumn on the French race-course 
near the town, are very curious, and well worth 
seeing. Their peculiarity consists in about thirty 
Arabs starting off pell-mell, knocking each other 
over in their first great rush, their bournouses 
mingling together and flying in the wind, but 
arriving at the goal generally singly, and at a slow 
trot, in anything but racing fashion. Another 
event is the annual gathering of the tribes, when 
representatives from the various provinces camp 
on the hills of the Sahel, and the European can 
wander from one tent to another and spend his 
day enjoying Arab hospitality, in sipping coffee 
and smoking everywhere the pipe of peace. 



46 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

These things we only hint at as resources for 
visitors, if they are fortunate enough to be in 
Algiers at the right time; but there are one or 
two other things that they are not likely to miss, 
whether they wish to do so or not. 

They will probably meet one day, in the " Street 
of the Eastern Gate," the Sirocco wind, and they 
will have to take shelter from a sudden fearful 
darkness and heat, a blinding, choking dust, dry- 
ing up as it were the very breath of life, pene- 
trating every cavity, and into rooms closed as far 
as possible from the outer air. Man and beast 
lie down before it, and there is a sudden silence 
in the streets, as if they had been overwhelmed 
by the sea. For two or three hours this myste- 
rious blight pours over the city, and its inhabi- 
tants hide their heads. 

Another rather startling sensation for the first 
time is the " morning gun." In the consulate, which 
is in an old Moorish house in the upper town, 



THE MORNING GUN. 47 

the newly arrived visitor may have been shown 
imbedded in the wall a large round shot, which 
he is informed was a messenger from one of Lord 
Exmouth's three-deckers in the days before the 
French occupation ; and not many yards from it, 
in another street, he may have had pointed out 
to him certain fissures or chasms in the walls of 
the houses, as the havoc made by earthquakes; 
he may also have experienced in his travels the 
sudden and severe effect of a tropical thunder- 
storm. Let him retire to rest with a dreamy 
recollection of such events in his mind, and let 
him have his windows open towards the port just 
before sunrise, — when the earthquake and the 
thunder and the bombardment will present them- 
selves so suddenly and fearfully to his sleepy 
senses, that he will bear malice against the mili- 
tary governor forevermore. 

But it has roused him to see another of the 
sights of Algiers. Let him go out at once in the 



48 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

dim morning light to the almost deserted Place, 
where a few tall figures wrapped in military cloaks 
are to be seen sidling out of a door in the corner 
of a square under the arcades, — coming from the 
club where the gas is not quite extinguished, and 
where the little green baize tables are not yet 
put away for the night ; * and then let him hurry 
on to the Bab-el-Oued and mount the fortifica- 
tions, and he will see a number of poor Arabs 
shivering in their white bournouses, perched on 
the highest points of the rocks like eagles, watch- 
ing with eager eyes and strained aspect for the 
rising of the sun, for "the coming of the second 
Mahomet." Let him look in the same direction, 
eastward, over the town and over the bay to the 

* How often have we seen in the Tuileries gardens the 
bronzed heroes of Algerian wars, and perhaps have pitied them 
for their worn appearance 5 but we shall begin to think that 
something more than the African sun and long marches have 
given them a prematurely aged appearance, and that absinthe 
and late hours in a temperature of 90° Fahrenheit may have 
something to do with it. 



SUNRISE. 49 



mountains far beyond. Surely the time has come ! 
The sparks from his chariot-wheels of fire just 
fringe the outline of the Kabyle Hills, and in 
another minute, before all the Arabs have clam- 
bered up and reached their vantage-ground, the 
whole bay is in a flood of light. The Arabs 
prostrate themselves before the sun, and "Allah 
il Allah' 1 (God is great) is the burden of their 
psalm of praise. 

But Mahomet's coming is not yet ; the Arabs 
return down the hill, and crowd together to a very 
different scene. The officers, whom we saw just 
now leaving the Place, have arrived at the Champ 
de Mars, the drill-ground immediately below us, 
and here, in the cool morning air, they are exer- 
cising and manoeuvring troops. There are several 
companies going through their drill, and the bugle 
and the drum drown the Muezzins' voices, who, 
from almost every mosque and turret in the city, 
repeat their cry to the faithful, " Come to prayers." 




THE MOORISH QUARTER. 



w 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE MOORISH QUARTER. OUR STUDIO. 

E said, in the last chapter, that in Algiers 



there was very little going on for the 
visitor or idler ; but if the traveller have anything 
of the artist in him, he will be delighted with the 
old town. If he is wise, he will spend the first 
week in wandering about, and losing himself in 
the winding streets, going here, there, and every- 
where on a picturesque tour of inspection. His 
artistic tendencies will probably lead him to 
spend much time in the Moorish cafes, where 
he may sit down unmolested (if unwelcomed) 
for hours on a mat, and drink his little saucer 
of thick, sweet coffee, for which he pays one 



52 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

sou, and smoke in the midst of a group of 
silent Moors, who may perchance acknowledge 
his presence by a slight gesture, and offer him 
their pipes; but who will more frequently affect 
not to see him, and sit still doing absolutely 
nothing, with that dignified solemnity peculiar 
to the East. 

He will pass through narrow streets and be- 
tween mysterious-looking old houses that meet 
overhead and shut out the sky; he will jostle 
often, in these narrow ways, soft plump objects 
in white gauze, whose eyes and ankles give the 
only visible signs of humanity ; he may turn back 
to watch the wonderful dexterity with which a 
young Arab girl balances a load of fruit upon 
her head down to the market-place ; and he will, 
if he is not careful, be finally carried down him- 
self by an avalanche of donkeys, — driven by a 
negro gamin who sits on the tail of the last, — 
threading their way noiselessly and swiftly, and 



THE MOORISH QUARTER. 53 

carrying everything before them ; * and he will 
probably take refuge under the ruined arch of 
some old mosque, whose graceful lines and rich 
decoration are still visible here and there ; and he 
will in a few hours be enchanted with the place, 
and the more so for the reason that we have 
already hinted at, namely, that in Algiers he is 
let alone, that he is free to wander and " moon " 
about at will, without custodian or commissionaire, 
or any of the tribe of "valets de place." 

He may go into the Grand Divan ; or into the 
streets where the embroiderers are at work, sitting 
in front of their open shops, amongst heaps of 
silks, rich stuffs, and every variety of material ; 
or where the old merchant traders, whose occu- 

* How different from what we read of in ^Eothen. The 
cry is not, "Get out of the way, old man ! virgin ! — the 
Englishman, lie comes, he comes ! " If we were to push an 
old man out of the way, or, ever so little, forget our duty to 
a fair pedestrian, we should be brought up before the Cadi, 
and fined and scorned by a jury of unbelievers ! 



54 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

pation is nearly gone, sit smoking out their lazy, 
uncommercial lives. 

He may go to the old Moorish bath, in a build- 
ing of curious pattern, which is as well worth 
seeing as anything in Algiers ; and, if an Arabic 
scholar, he may pick up an acquaintance or two 
amongst the Moors, and visit their homes when 
their wives are away for the day, on some mourn- 
ing expedition to a suburban cemetery. He may 
explore innumerable crooked, irregular streets, 
with low doorways and carved lattices, some 
painted, some gilt ; the little narrow windows 
and the grilles being as perfectly after the old 
type as when the Moors held undivided posses- 
sion of the city. 

One old street, now pulled down, we remember 
well j it was the one always chosen for an even- 
ing stroll, because it faced the western sea, and 
caught and reflected from its pavement and from 
its white walls the last tints of sunset long after 



THE MOORISH QUARTER. 55 

the cobblers and the tinkers in the lower town 
had lighted their little lanterns, and the cafes 
were flaring in the French quarter. It was steep 
and narrow; so steep, in fact, that steps were 
made in the pavement to climb it. Dark at the 
lower end, at the upper there was the dome of a 
mosque shining in the sun. Like the child's pic- 
ture of "Jacob's ladder," it was brighter and 
more resplendent at each step, ending in a blaze 
of gold. 

We are often reminded of Spain in these old 
streets ; there are massive wooden doors studded 
with iron bosses or huge nails as we see them 
at Toledo, and there is sometimes to be seen over 
them the emblem of the human hand pointing 
upwards, which recalls the Gate of Justice at the 
entrance to the Alhambra at Granada. The 
Moors cling to their old traditions, and the be- 
lief that they will some day reconquer Spain is 
still an article of faith. But if ever the Moors 



56 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

are to regain their imaginary lost possessions in 
Spain, they must surely be made of sterner 
stuff than the present race, who, judging from 
appearances, are little likely to do anything 
great. 

There are little shops and dark niches where 
the Moors sit cross-legged, with great gourds and 
festoons of dried fruits hanging above and around 
them ; the piles of red morocco slippers, the odd- 
shaped earthenware vessels, and the wonderful 
medley of form and color, resembling in variety 
the bazaars at Constantinople, or carrying us in 
imagination still farther East. 

Other sights and sounds we might mention, 
some not quite so pleasant, but peculiarly Eastern ; 
and we should not forget to note the peculiar 
scent of herbs and stuffs, which, mingled with 
the aroma of coffee and tobacco, was sometimes 
almost overpowering in the little covered streets ; 
and one odor that went up regularly on Sunday 



THE MOORISH QUARTER. 57 

niorniugs in the Moorish quarter that was not 
incense, and which it took us a long time to 
discover the origin of, — an Arab branding his 
donkeys with his monogram ! 

Everything we purchase is odd and quaint, 
irregular or curious in some way. Every piece 
of embroidery, every remnant of old carpet, differs 
from another in pattern as the leaves on the 
trees. There is no repetition, and herein lies its 
charm and true value to us. Every fabric differs 
either in pattern or combination of colors, — it 
is something, as we said, unique, something to 
treasure, something that will not remind us of 
the mill. 

If we explore still further we shall come to the 

Arab quarter, where we also find characteristic 

things. Here we may purchase for about thirty 

francs a Kabyle match-lock rifle, or an old sabre 

with beautifully ornamented hilt ; we may, if we 

please, ransack piles of primitive and rusty im- 
3* 



58 ARTISTS AND ARABS, 

plements of all kinds, and pick up curious women's 
ornaments, — beads, coral, and anklets of filagree 
work ; and, if we are fortunate, meet with a com- 
plete set or suit of harness and trappings, once 
the property of some insolvent Arab chief, and 
of a pattern made familiar to us in the illustrated 
history of the Cid. 

In the midst of the Moorish quarter, up a 
little narrow street (reached in five or six min- 
utes from the centre of the town) passing under 
an archway and between white walls that nearly 
meet overhead, we come to a low dark door, 
with a heavy handle and latch which opens and 
shuts with a crashing sound ; and if we enter the 
courtyard and ascend a narrow staircase in one 
corner, we come suddenly upon the interior view 
of the first or principal floor of our Moorish home. 

The house has two stories, and there is also 
an upper terrace from which we overlook the 



OUR STUDIO, 59 



town. The arrangement of the rooms round the 
courtyard, all opening inwards, is excellent : they 
are cool in summer, and warm even on the 
coldest nights ; and although we are in a noisy 
and thickly populated part of the town, we are 
ignorant of what goes on outside, the massive 
walls keeping out nearly all sound. The floors 
and walls are tiled, so that they can be cleansed 
and cooled by water being thrown over them ; 
the carpets and cushions spread about invite one 
to the most luxurious repose; tables and chairs 
are unknown ; there is nothing to offend the eye 
in shape or form, nothing to offend the ear, — 
not even a door to slam. 

Above, there is an open terrace, where we sit 
in the mornings and evenings, and can realize 
the system of life on the house-tops of the East. 
Here we can cultivate the vine, grow roses and 
other flowers, build for ourselves extempore ar- 
bors, and live literally in the open air. 



60 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

From this terrace we overlook the flat roofs 
of the houses of the Moorish part of the city ; 
and if we peep over, down into the streets im- 
mediately below us, a curious hum of sounds 
comes up. Our neighbors are certainly indus- 
trious : they embroider, they make slippers, they 
hammer at metal work, they break earthenware 
and mend it, and appear to quarrel all day long, 
within a few feet of us ; but as we sit in the 
room from which our sketch is taken, the 
sounds become mingled and subdued into a 
pleasant tinkle which is almost musical, and 
which we can, if we please, shut out entirely 
by dropping a curtain across the doorway. % 

Our attendants are Moorish, and consist of 
one old woman, whom we see by accident (closely 
veiled) about once a month, and a bare-legged, 
barefooted Arab boy who waits upon us. There 
are pigeons on the roof, a French poodle that 
frequents the lower regions, and a guardian of 









OUR STUDIO. 61 



our doorstep who haunts it day and night, whose 
portrait is given at page 98. 

Here we work with the greatest freedom and 
comfort, without interruption or any drawbacks 
that we can think of. The climate is so equal, 
warm, and pleasant, even in December and Jan- 
uary, that by preference we generally sit on the 
upper terrace, where we have the perfection of 
light, and are at the same time sufficiently pro- 
tected from sun and wind. At night we sleep 
almost in the open air, and need scarcely drop 
the curtains at the arched doorways of our rooms ; 
there are no mosquitoes to trouble us, and there 
is certainly no fear of intrusion. There is also 
perfect stillness, for our neighbors are at rest 
soon after sundown. 

Such is a general sketch of our dwelling in 
Algiers ; let us for a moment, by way of con- 
trast, turn in imagination to London, and picture 
to ourselves our friends as they are working at 



62 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

home. It is considered very desirable, if not 
essential, to an artist, that his immediate sur- 
roundings should be in some sort graceful and 
harmonious, and it is a lesson worth learning, to 
see what may be done, with ingenuity and taste, 
towards converting a single room, in a dingy 
street, into a fitting abode of the arts. 

We know a certain painter well, one whose 
studio it is always a delight to enter, and whose 
devotion to Art for its own sake (both music 
and painting) has always stood in the way of 
his advancement and pecuniary success. He has 
converted a room in a dark street in London 
into a charming nook where color, form, and 
texture are all considered in the simplest details 
of decoration, where there is nothing inharmo- 
nious to eye or ear, but where perhaps the sound 
of the guitar may be heard a little too often. 
The walls of his studio are draped, the light 
falls softly from above, the doorway is arched, 



WINTER STUDIOS. 63 

the seats are couches or carpets on a raised dai's, 
a Florentine lamp hangs from the ceiling, a 
medley of vases, costumes, old armor, &c, are 
grouped about in picturesque confusion, and our 
friend, in an easy undress of the last century, 
works away in the midst. 

Not to particularize further, let the reader con- 
sider for a moment what one step beyond his 
own door brings about, on an average winter's 
day. A. straight, ungraceful, colorless costume of 
the latter half of the nineteenth century which 
he must assume, a hat of the period, an um- 
brella raised to keep off sleet and rain, and for 
landscape a damp, dreary, muddy, blackened 
street, with a vista of areas and lamp-posts ! 

Perhaps the most depressing prospect in the 
world is that from a doorstep in a narrow street 
in London on a November morning about nine 
o'clock ; but of this enough. We think of our 
friend as we sit out here on our terrasse, — shel- 



64 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

tering ourselves on the same day, at the same 
hour, from the sun's rays, — we think of him 
painting Italian scenes by the light of his gas 
"sun-burner," and wish he would come out to 
Algiers. " Surely," we would say to him, "it is 
something gained, if we can, ever so little, har- 
monize the realities of life with our ideal world ; 
if we can, without remark, dress ourselves more 
as we dress our models, and so live, that one 
step from the studio to the street shall not be 
the abomination of desolation." * 

Let us turn again to Mature and to Light, and 
transport the reader to a little white house over- 
looking a beautiful city on the Xorth African 
shore, where summer is perpetual and indoor life 
the exception ; and draw a picture for him which 
should be fascinating, and which certainly is true. 

* It would be obviously in bad taste for Europeans to walk 
in the streets of Algiers, en costume Maure ; but we may- 
make considerable modifications in our attire in an Oriental 
city, to our great comfort and peace of mind. 



THE BREAK OF DAT. 65 

Algiers, Sunrise, December 10. 

The mysterious, indefinable charm of the first 
break of day is an old and favorite theme in all 
countries and climates, and one on which per- 
haps little that is new can be said. In the East 
it is always striking, but in Algiers it seems to 
us peculiarly so ; for sleeping, or more often 
lying awake, with the clear crisp night air upon 
our faces, it comes to our couch in the dream- 
iest way imaginable, — instead of being clothed 
(as poets express it) with the veil of night, a 
mantle seems rather to be spread over us in the 
morning; there is perfect quiet at this hour, 
and we seem to be almost under a spell not to 
disturb the stillness, — the dawn whispers to us 
so softly and soothingly that we are powerless to 
do aught but watch or sleep. 

The break of day is perhaps first announced 
to us by a faint stream of light across the court- 
yard, or the dim shadow of a marble pillar on 



66 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

the wall. In a few minutes we hear the dis- 
tant barking of a dog, a slight rustle in the 
pigeon -house above, or a solitary cry from a min- 
aret which tells us that the city is awaking. 
We rouse ourselves and steal out quietly to the 
upper terrace to see a sight of sights, — one of 
those things that books tell us, rightly or 
wrongly, is alone worth coming to Algeria to 
see. 

The canopy of stars, that had encompassed us 
so closely during the night, as if to shut in the 
courtyard overhead, seems lifted again, and the 
stars themselves are disappearing fast in the 
gray expanse of sky ; and as we endeavor to 
trace them, looking intently seaward, towards 
the north and east, we can just discern an hori- 
zon line and faint shadows of the " sleeping 
giants," that we know to be not far off. Soon — 
in about the same time that it takes to write 
these lines — they begin to take form and out- 



SUXBISE. 67 



line one by one, a tinge of delicate pearly pink 
is seen at intervals through their shadows, and 
before any nearer objects have come into view, 
the whole coast line and the mountains of Ka- 
bylia, stretching far to the eastward, are flushed 
with rosy light, opposed to a veil of twilight 
gray which is spread over the city. 

Another minute or two, and our shadows are 
thrown sharply on a glowing wall, towers and 
domes come distinctly into view, house-tops in- 
numerable range themselves in close array at our 
feet, and we, who but a few minutes ago seemed 
to be standing as it were alone upon the top of 
a high mountain, are suddenly and closely be- 
leaguered. A city of flat white roofs, towers, 
and cupolas, relieved here and there by colored 
awnings, green shutters, and dark doorways, and 
by little courtyards blooming with orange and 
citron trees, intersected with innumerable wind- 
ing ways, which look like streams forcing their 



68 ARTISTS AND ARABS, 

way through a chalk-cliff, has all grown up be- 
fore our eyes ; and beyond it, seaward, a harbor, 
and a fleet of little vessels with their white 
sails, are seen shining in the sun. 

Then come the hundred sounds of a waking 
city, mingling and increasing every moment ; and 
the flat roofs (some so close that we can step upon 
them) are soon alive with those quaint white 
figures we meet in the streets, passing to and fro, 
from roof to roof, apparently without restraint 
or fear. There are numbers of children peeping 
out from odd corners and loop-holes, and women 
with them, some dressed much less scrupulously 
than we see them in the market-place, and some, 
to tell the truth, entirely without the white 
robes aforesaid. A few, a very few, are already 
winding their way through the streets to the 
nearest mosque, but the majority are collected in 
groups in conversation, enjoying the sweet sea- 
breeze, which comes laden with the perfume of 






SUNRISE. 69 



orange-trees, and a peculiar delicious scent as of 
violets. 

The pigeons on the roof-tops now plume their 
gilded wings, and soar — not upward, but down- 
ward, far away into space ; they scarcely break 
the silence in the air, or spread their wings as 
they speed along. 

0, what a flight above the azure sea ! 

M Quis dabat mihi pennas sicut columbae " ; 

for the very action of flying seems repose to 
them. 

It is still barely sunrise on this soft December 
morning, the day's labor has scarcely begun, the 
calm is so perfect that existence alone seems a 
delight, and the Eastern aroma, if we may so 
express it, that pervades the air might almost 
lull us to sleep again, but Allah wills it other- 
wise. 

Suddenly — with terrible impulse and shrill 



70 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

accent impossible to describe — a hurricane of 
women's voices succeeds the calm. Is it treach- 
ery 1 Is it scandal ] Has Hassan proved faith- 
less, or has Fatima fled] the screeching and 
yelling that succeeded to the quiet beauty of the 
morning ! the rushing about of veiled (now 
all closely veiled) figures on house-tops ! the 
weeping and wailing, and literal, terrible gnash- 
ing of teeth ! " Tell it not upon the house-tops," 
(shall we ever forget it being told on the house- 
tops ] ) "let not a whole city know thy misdeeds," 
is written in the Koran ; "it is better for the 
faithful to come to prayers ! " Merciful powers ! 
how the tempest raged until the sun was up and 
the city was alive again, and its sounds helped to 
drown the clamor ! 

Let us come down, for our Arab boy now 
claps his hands in sign that (on a little low table 
or tray, six inches from the ground) coffee and 
pipes are provided for the unbelievers ; and like 



SUNRISE. 71 



the Calendar in Eastern story, he proceeds to 
tell us the cause of the tumult, — a trinket taken 
from one wife and given to another ! Islam ! 
that a lost bracelet or a jealous wife should make 
the earth tremble sol 




MODELS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

" MODELS." 

FROM the roof-tops of our own and the 
neighboring houses Ave have altogether many- 
opportunities of sketching, and making studies 
from life. By degrees, by fits and starts, and by 
most uncertain means (such as attracting curiosity, 
making little presents, &c), we manage to scrape 
up a distant talking acquaintance with some of 
the mysterious, wayward creatures we have spo- 
ken of, and, in short, to become almost "neigh- 
borly." 

But we never get much nearer than talking 
distance, conversing from one roof to another 
with a narrow street like a river flowing between 
4 



ARTISTS AND ARABS. 



us; and only once or twice during our winter 
sojourn did we succeed in enticing a veiled houri 
to venture on our terrace and shake hands with 
the " Frank." If we could manage to hold a young 
lady in conversation, and exhibit sufficient ad- 
miration of her to induce her, ever so slightly, 
to unveil whilst we made a hasty sketch, it was 
about all that we could fairly succeed in accom- 
plishing, and "the game was hardly worth the 
candle " ; it took, perhaps, an hour to ensnare our 
bird, and in ten minutes or less she would be 
again on the wing. Veiled beauties are interest- 
ing, sometimes much more interesting for being 
veiled; but it does not serve our artistic pur- 
poses much to see two splendid black eyes and a 
few white robes. 

However, models we must have, although the 
profession is almost unknown in Algiers. At 
Naples we have only to go down to the sea- 
shore, at Eome to the steps of St. Peter's, and 



"MODELS." 75 



we find " subjects " enough, who will come for 
the asking ; but here, where there is so much 
distinctive costume and variety of race, French 
artists seem to make little use of their opportu- 
nities. 

It takes some days before we can hear of any 
one who will be willing to sit for double the 
usual remuneration. But they come at last, and 
when it gets abroad that the Franks have money 
and " mean business," we have a number of ap- 
plicants, some of whom are not very desirable, 
and none particularly attractive. AYe select 
" Fatima " first, because she is. the youngest and 
has the best costume, and also because she comes 
with her father and appears tractable. She is 
engaged at two francs an hour,, which she con- 
siders poor pay. 

How shall we give the reader an idea of this 
little creature, when she comes next morning and 
coils herself up amongst the cushions in the cor- 



76 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

ner of our room, like a young panther in the 
Jardin des Plantes ? Her costume, when she 
throws off her haik (and with it a tradition of 
the Mohammedan faith, that forbids her to show 
her face to an unbeliever), is a rich loose crim- 
son jacket embroidered with gold, a thin white 
bodice, loose silk trousers reaching to the knee 
and fastened round the waist by a magnificent 
sash of various colors, red morocco slippers, a 
profusion of rings on her little fingers, and 
bracelets and anklets of gold filagree work. 
Through her waving black hair are twined 
strings of coins and the folds of a silk handker- 
chief, the hair falling at the back in plaits below 
the waist. 

She is not beautiful, she is scarcely interesting 
in expression, and she is decidedly unsteady. 
She seems to have no more power of keeping 
herself in one position or of remaining in one 
part of the room, or even of being quiet, than a 



" models: 1 77 



humming-top. The whole thing is an unuttera- 
ble bore to her, for she does not even reap the 
reward, — her father or husband or male attend- 
ant always taking the money. 

She is petite, constitutionally phlegmatic, and 
as fat as her parents can manage to make her ; 
she has small hands and feet, large rolling eyes, 
— the latter made to appear artificially large by 
the application of henna or antimony black; her 
attitudes are not ungraceful, but there is a want 
of character about her, and an utter abandonment 
to the situation, peculiar to all her race. In short, 
her movements are more suggestive of a little 
caged animal that had better be petted and 
caressed, or kept at a safe distance, according to 
her humor. She does one thing, — she smokes 
incessantly, and makes cigarettes with a skill and 
rapidity which are wonderful. 

Her age is thirteen, and she has been married 
six months; her ideas appear to be limited to 



78 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

three or four, and her pleasures, poor creature ! 
are equally circumscribed. She had scarcely ever 
left her father's house, and had never spoken to 
a man until her marriage. No wonder that we, 
in spite of a little Arabic on which we prided our- 
selves, could not make much way; no wonder 
that we came very rapidly to the conclusion that 
the houris of the Arabian Nights must have been 
dull creatures, and their " Entertainments " rather 
a failure, if there were no diviner fire than this. 
No wonder that the Moors advocate a plurality 
of wives ; for if one represents an emotion, a harem 
would scarcely suffice. 

We get on but indifferently with our studies 
with this young lady, and, to tell the truth, not 
too well in Fatinia's good graces. Our oppor- 
tunities are not great, our command of Arabic is 
limited, and, indeed, we do not feel particularly 
inspired. We cannot tell her many love-stories, 
or sing songs set to a " tom-tom " ; we can, indeed, 



''MODELS:' 79 



offer " backshish. " in the shape of tobacco and 
sweetmeats, or some trifling European ornament 
or trinket ; but it is clear that she would prefer a 
greater amount of familiarity, and more demon- 
strative tokens of esteem. However, she came 
several times, and we succeeded in obtaining 
some valuable studies of color, and " bits," memo- 
randa only; but very useful, from being taken 
down almost unconsciously, in such a luminous 
key, and with a variety of reflected light and 
pure shadow tone, that we find unapproachable 
in after work. 

As for sketches of character, we obtained very 
few of Mauresques; our subjects w r ere, as a rule, 
much too restless, and we had one or two " scenes" 
before w r e parted. On one unfortunate occasion 
our model insisted upon examining our work 
before leaving, and the scorn and contempt 
with which it was regarded was anything but 
flattering. It nearly caused a breach between 



80 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

us, for, as she observed, it was not only con- 
trary to her creed to have her likeness taken, 
but it would be perdition to be thus represented 
amongst the Franks.* We promised to be as 
careful of this portrait as if it were the original, 
and, in fact, said anything to be polite and 
soothing. 

On another occasion we had been working on 
rather more quietly than usual for half an hour, 
and were really getting a satisfactory study of a 
new position, when, without apparent cause or 
warning of any kind, the strange, pale, passion- 
less face, which stared like a wooden marionette, 
suddenly suffused with crimson, the great eyes 
filled with tears, the whole frame throbbed con- 
vulsively, and the little creature fell into such a 
passion of crying' that we were fain to put by 

* For fear of the "evil eye." There is a strong belief 
amongst Mohammedans that portraits are part of their iden- 
tity; and that the original will suffer if the portrait receive 
any indignity. 



"MODELS." 81 



our work and question ourselves whether we had 
been cruel or unkind. But it was nothing : the 
cup of boredom had been filled to the brim, all 
other artifices had failed her to obtain relief from 
restraint, and so this apparently lethargic little 
being, who had, it seemed, both passion and grief 
at command, opened the flood-gates upon us, and 
of course gained her end. There was no more 
work that day, and she got off with a double 
allowance of bonbons, and something like a rec- 
onciliation. She gave us her little white hand 
at parting, — the fingers and thumbs crowded 
with rings, and the nails stained black with 
henna, — but the action meant nothing; we dared 
not press it, it was too soft and frail, and the 
rings would have cut her fingers ; we could only 
hand it tenderly back again, and bid our " model " 
farewell. 

We got on better afterwards with a Moorish 

Jewess, who, for a " consideration," unearthed her 
4* P 



82 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

property,* including a tiara of gold and jewels, 
and a bodice of silver embroidery worked on 
crimson velvet ; we purposely reverse the usual 
position and speak of the embroidery first, because 
the velvet was almost hidden. She came slouch- 
ing in one morning, closely wrapped in a dirty 
shawl, her black hair all dishevelled and half 
covering her handsome face, her feet bare and 
her general appearance so much more suggestive 
of one of the " finest pisantry in the world," that 
we began to feel doubtful, and to think with 
Beau Brummel that this must be " one of our 
failures." But when her mother had arranged 
the tiara in her hair, when the curtain was 
drawn aside and the full splendor of the Jewish 
costume was displayed, — when, in short, the 
dignity and grace of a queen were before us, we 
felt rewarded. 

* Many of the poorest Jewesses possess gold ornaments 
as heirlooms, burying them in the ground for security when 
not in use. 



MOORISH COSTUME. 83 

The Jewish dress differs from the Mauresque 
entirely ; it is European in shape, with high 
waist and flowing robes without sleeves, a 
square-cut bodice, generally of the same mate- 
rial as the robe itself, and a profusion of gold 
ornaments, armlets, necklaces, and rings. A pair 
of tiny velvet slippers (also embroidered) on 
tiny feet complete the costume, which varies 
in color, but is generally of crimson or dark 
velvet. 

As a "model," although almost her first ap- 
pearance in that character, this Jewish woman 
was very valuable, and we had little trouble, 
after the first interview, in making her under- 
stand our wishes. But we had to pay more 
than in England; there were many draw- 
backs, and of course much waste of time. On 
some holydays and on all Jewish festivals she 
did not make her appearance, and seemed 
to think nothing of it when some feast that 



84 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

lasted a week left us stranded with half-done 
work. 

Without being learned in modern costumes des 
dames, we believe we may say that the shape 
and cut of some of these dresses and the pat- 
terns of the embroidery (old as they are) might 
be copied with advantage by Parisian modistes ; 
and the more we study these old patterns, the 
more we regret that the Bece ex mackind, the 
arbiters of fashion in the city where Fashion is 
Queen, have not managed to infuse into the cos- 
tume of the time more character and purity of 
design, — conditions not inconsistent with splen- 
dor, and affording scope, if need be, for any 
amount of extravagance. "We are led irresisti- 
bly into this digression, if it be a digression, 
because the statuesque figure before us displays 
so many lines of grace and beauty that have 
the additional charm of novelty. We know, 
for instance, that the pattern of this embroidery 



MO ORISH BE A XJTY. 85 

is unique, that the artificer of that curiously 
twined chain of gold has been dead for ages, 
that the rings on her ringers and the coins sus- 
pended from her hair are many of them real art 
treasures.* 

The result of our studies, as far as regards 
Moorish women, we must admit to have been, 
after all, rather limited and unsatisfactory. We 
never once lighted upon a Moorish face that 
moved us much by its beauty, for the simple 
reason that it nearly always lacked expression; 
anything like emotion seemed inharmonious and 
out of place, and to disturb the uniformity of 
its lines. Even those dark lustrous eyes, when 
lighted by passion, had more of the tiger in 
them than the tragedy queen. 

The perfection of beauty, according to the 
Moorish ideal, seems to depend principally upon 

* The "jewels " turned out to be paste on close inspec- 
tion, but the gold filagree work and the other ornaments 
were old, and some very valuable and rare. 



86 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

symmetry of feature, and is nothing without 
roundness of limb and a certain flabbiness of 
texture. It is an ideal of repose, not to say of 
dulness and insipidity; a heavy type of beauty 
of which we obtain some idea in a fine draw- 
ing, of a young girl, about thirteen years old. 
The drawing is by a Frenchman, and pretends 
to no particular artistic excellence, but it at- 
tempts to render (and we think succeeds in ren- 
dering) the style of a Mohammedan beauty in 
bridal array; one who is about to fulfil her 
destiny, and who appears to have as little ani- 
mation or intelligence as the Prophet ordained 
for her, being perfectly fitted, according to the 
Koran, to fill her place in this world and in 
the next.* Thus decked with her brightest 

* It detracts a little from the romance of these things to 
learn from Mrs. Evans (who witnessed, what only ladies, of 
course, could witness, the robing and decorating of the bride 
before marriage) the manner in which the face of a Moorish 
lady is prepared on the day of marriage. . 

"An old woman, having carefully washed the bride's face 



A MOORISH BRIDE. 87 

jewels and adorned with a crown of gold, she 
waits to meet her lord, to be his "light of the 
harem," his "sun and moon." What if we, 
with our refined aesthetic tastes, what if disinter- 
ested spectators, vote her altogether the dullest 
and most uninteresting of beings'? what if she 
seem to us more like some young animal, mag- 
nificently harnessed, waiting to be trotted out to 
the highest bidder] She shakes the coins and 
beads on her head sometimes, with a slight im- 
patient gesture, and takes chocolate from her 
little sister, and is petted and pacified just as 
we should soothe and pacify an impatient steed; 

with water, proceeded to whiten it all over with a milky 
looking preparation, and after touching up the cheeks with 
rouge (and her eyes with antimony black), bound an amu- 
let round the head ; then with a fine camel-hair pencil she 
passed a line of liquid glue over the eyebrows, and taking 
from a folded paper a strip of gold-leaf, fixed it across them 
both, forming one long gilt bar; and then proceeded to 
give a few finishing touches to the poor lay figure before her 
by fastening two or three tiny gold spangles on the fore- 
head!" 



ARTISTS AND ARABS. 



there is clearly no other way to treat her, it is 
the will of Allah that she should be so de- 
based ! * 

One day we had up a tinker, an old brown 
grizzled Maltese, who with his implements of 
trade, his patchwork garments and his dirt, had 
a tone about him, like a figure from one of the 
old Dutch masters. He sat down in the corner 
of our courtyard against a marble pillar, and 
made himself quite at home ; he worked with 
his feet as well as his hands at his grinding; 
he chattered, he sang, and altogether made such 
a clatter that we shall not be likely to forget 
him. 

This gentleman, and the old negro that lived 

* We have before spoken of the humanizing influence of 
beautiful forms and harmony in color in our homes and sur- 
roundings ; and we feel acutely that the picture of this Moor- 
ish woman, intellectually, does not prove our case ; but 
Mahomet decreed that women should endeavor to be beautiful 
rather than appreciate or enjoy it. 






'MODELS:' 89 



upon our doorstep, were almost the only sub- 
jects that we succeeded in inducing to come 
within doors ; our other life studies were made 
under less favorable circumstances. From the 
roof of oui own house, it is true, we obtained a 
variety of sketches, not, as might be supposed 
from the illustrations and pictures with which 
all are familiar, of young ladies attired as scantily 
as the nymphs at the Theatre die Chatelet in 
Paris, standing in pensive attitudes on their 
house-tops, but generally of groups of veiled 
women, old, ugly, haggard, shrill of voice, and 
sometimes rather fierce of aspect, performing 
various household duties on the roof-tops, in- 
cluding the beating of carpets and of children, 
the carrying of water-pots, and the saying of 
prayers. 

A chapter on "Models" would not be com- 
plete without some mention of the camels, of 
which there are numbers to be found in the 



90 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

Arab quarter of the town. Some of them are 
splendid creatures, and as different from any 
exotic specimens that we can see in this country 
as an acclimatized palm-tree from its wild 
growth. 

Some one tells us that these Algerian " ships 
of the desert" have not the same sailing quali- 
ties, nor the same breadth of beam, as those at 
Cairo. But (if true) we should have to go to 
Cairo to study them, so let us be content. We 
should like to see one or two of our popular 
artists, who persist in painting camels and des- 
ert scenes without ever having been to the East, 
just sit down here quietly for one day and paint 
a camel's head; not flinching from the work, 
but mastering the wonderful texture and shag- 
giness of his thick coat or mane, its massive 
beauty, and its infinite gradations of color. Such 
a sitter no portrait-painter ever had in England. 
Feed him up first, get a boy to keep the flies 




A PORTRAIT. 



92 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

from him, and he will sit almost immovably 
through the day. He will put on a sad expres- 
sion in the morning, which will not change; 
he will give no trouble whatever; he will but 
sit still and croak. 

Do we seem to exaggerate the value of such 
studies'? We cannot exaggerate, if we take into 
full account the vigorous quality which we im- 
part into our work. And we cannot, perhaps, 
better illustrate our argument in favor of draw- 
ing from what we should call natural models, 
than by comparing the merits of two of the 
most popular pictures of our time, namely, Frith's 
" Derby Day " and Eosa Bonheur's " Horse 
Fair" ; the former pleasing the eye by its clev- 
erness and prettiness, the latter impressing the 
spectator by its power, and its truthful render- 
ing of animal life. The difference between the 
two painters is probably one more of education 
than of natural gifts. But whilst the style of 



"MODELS." 93 



the former is grafted on a fashion, the latter is 
founded on a rock, — the result of a close study 
of nature, chastened by classic feeling, and a 
remembrance, it may be, of the friezes of the 
Parthenon* 




OUR "LIFE SCHOOL." 



CHAPTEE V. 

OUR " LIFE SCHOOL." 

OF the various studies to be made in Al- 
giers, there are none so characteristic as the 
Moors in their homes, seated at their own doors 
or benches at work, or at the numerous cafes and 
bazaars ; and nothing seems to harmonize so well 
in these Moorish streets as the groups of natives, 
both Moors and negroes, with their bright cos- 
tumes, and wares for sale. Color and contrast of 
color seem to be considered, or felt, everywhere. 
Thus, for instance, no two Orientals will walk 
down a street side by side, unless the colors of 
their costume harmonize or blend together (they 
seem to know it instinctively) ; and then there is 



96 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

always gray or some quiet contrasting tone for a 
background, and a sky of deep blue. A negress 
will generally be found selling oranges or citrons ; 
an Arab boy, with a red fez and white turban, 
carrying purple fruit in a basket of leaves ; and 
so on. The reader will think this fanciful, but it 
is truer than he imagines ; let him come and see. 

It was not at all times easy to sketch in the 
open street, on account of the curiosity it excited ; 
a crowd collecting sometimes until it became 
almost impossible to breathe. The plan was to 
go as often as possible to the cafes and divans, 
and by degrees to make friends with the Moors. 

There was one cafe, in a street that we have 
been to so often that it is as familiar to us as 
any in the Western world, where by dint of a 
little tact and a small outlay of tobacco we man- 
aged to make ourselves quite at home, and were 
permitted to work away all day comparatively 
unmolested. It was a narrow and steep over- 



MOORISH CAFES, 97 

hanging street, crowded at all times with Moors 
on one side embroidering, or pretending to sell 
goods of various kinds ; and on the opposite side 
there was a cafe, not four feet distant, where a 
row of about eighteen others sat and smoked, and 
contemplated their brethren at work. The street 
was full of traffic, being an important thorough- 
fare from the upper to the lower town, and there 
were perpetually passing up and down droves 
of laden donkeys, men with burdens carried on 
poles between them, venders of fruit, bread, and 
live fowls, and crowds of people of every de- 
nomination. 

In a little corner out of sight, where we were 
certainly rather closely packed, we used to install 
ourselves continually and sketch the people pass- 
ing to and fro. The Moors in the cafe used to 
sit beside us all day, and watch and wait ; they 
gave us a grave, silent salutation when we took 
our places, and another when we left, but we 



98 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

never got much further with our unknown neigh- 
bors. If we can imagine a coterie in a small po- 
litical club, where the open discussion of politics 
is, with one consent, tabooed for fear of a disturb- 
ance, and where the most frolicsome of its mem- 
bers play at chess for relaxation, we shall get 
some notion of the state of absolute decorum 
which existed in our little cafe maure. 

It was very quaint. The memory of the grave, 
quiet faces of these polite Moorish gentlemen, 
looking so smooth and clean in their white bour- 
nouses, seated solemnly doing nothing, haunts us 
to this day. Years elapsed between our first and 
last visit to our favorite street ; yet there they 
were when we came again, still doing nothing in 
a row ; and opposite to them the merchants who 
do no trade, also sitting in their accustomed places, 
surrounded with the same old wares. There was 
the same old negro in a dark corner making coffee, 
and handing it to the same customers, sitting in 
the same places, in the same dream. 



MOORISH CAFES. 99 

There is certainly both art and mystery in do- 
ing nothing well, which these men achieve in 
their pecuKar lives ; here they sit for years to- 
gether, silently waiting, without a trace of bore- 
dom on their faces, and without exhibiting a 
gesture of impatience. They — the " gentlemen " 
in the cafe on the right hand — have saved up 
money enough to keep life together; they have 
forever renounced work, and can look on with 
complacency at their poorer brethren. They have 
their traditions, their faith, their romance of life, 
and the curious belief before alluded to, that if 
they fear God and Mahomet, and sit here long 
enough, they will one day be sent for to Spain, 
to repeople the houses where their fathers dwelt. 
This corner is the one par excellence where the 
Moors sit and wait. There is the "wall of wail- 
ing " at Jerusalem ; there is the " street of wait- 
ing " in Algiers, where the Moors sit clothed in 
white, dreaming of heaven, with an aspect of 



100 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

more than content, in a state of dreamy delight, 
— achieved, apparently, more by habit of mind 
than any opiates, — the realization of " Keyf" 

Kot far from this street, but still in the Moor- 
ish quarter, we may witness a much more ani- 
mated scene, and obtain in some respects a better 
study of character and costume, — at a clothes auc- 
tion in the neighborhood of the principal bazaar. 
If we go in the afternoon, we shall probably find 
a crowd collected in a courtyard, round a number 
of Jews who are selling clothes, silks, and stuffs ; 
and so intent are they all on the business that 
is going forward, that we are able to take up a 
good position to watch the proceedings. 

We arrived one day at this spot just as a ter- 
rible scuffle or wrangle was going forward between 
ten or a dozen old men, surrounded by at least a 
hundred spectators, about the quality or owner- 
ship of some garment. The merits of the dis- 
cussion were of little interest to us, and were 



THE BAZAAR, 101 



probably of little importance to anybody, but the 
result was a spectacle that we could never have 
imagined, and certainly could never have seen, in 
any other land. 

This old garment had magical powers, and was 
a treasure to us at least. It attracted the old 
and young, the wise and foolish, the excited 
combatant and the calm and dignified spectator ; 
it collected them all in a large square courtyard 
with plain whitewashed walls and Moorish ar- 
cades. On one side a palm-tree drooped its 
gigantic leaves, and cast broad shadows on the 
ground, which in some places was almost of the 
brightness of orange; on the other side, half in 
[sunlight, half in shadow, a heavy awning was 
spread over a raised dais or stage, and through 
its tatters and through the deep arcades the sky 
appeared in patches of the deepest blue, — blue of 
a depth and brilliancy that few painters have ever 
succeeded in depicting. It gave in a wider and 



102 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

truer sense just that quality to our picture — if 
we may be excused a little technicality and a 
familiar illustration — that a broad red sash 
thrown across the bed of a sleeping child in 
Millais's picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition 
of 1867, gave to his composition, as many readers 
may remember. 

But we cannot take our eyes from the principal 
group, or do much more than watch the crowd in 
its changing phases. To give any idea of the up- 
roar — the "row," we ought to call it — would 
be to weary the reader with a polyglot of words 
and sentences, some not too choice, and many too 
shrill and fiercely accentuated ; but to picture 
the general aspect in a few words is worth a 
trial, although to do this we must join the throng 
and fight our way to the front. 

Where have we seen the like ? We have seen 
such upturned faces in pictures of the early days 
of the Eeformation by Henry Leys ; we have 



THE BAZAAR. 103 



seen such passion in Shi/lock, such despair in 
Lear, such grave and imposing-looking men with 
"reverend beards" in many pictures by the old 
masters; but seldom have we seen such concen- 
tration of emotion (if we may so express it) and 
unity of purpose in one group. 

Do our figure-painters want a subject, with 
variety of color and character in one canvas? 
They need not go to the bazaars of Constanti- 
nople, or to the markets of the East. Let them 
follow us here, crushing close to the platform, our 
faces nearly on a level with the boards. Look at 
the colors, at the folds of their cloaks, bour- 
nouses, and yachmahs, — purple, deep red, and 
spotless white, all crushed together, — with their 
rich transparent shadows, as the sun streams across 
them, reflected from the walls; whilst the heavy 
awning throws a curious glow over the figures, 
and sometimes almost conceals their features with 
a dazzle of reflected light. Look at the legs of 



104 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

these eager traders, as they struggle and fight and 
stand on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of some new 
thing exposed for sale ; look at them well, — the 
lean, the shambling, the -vigorous, the bare bronze 
(bronzed with sun and grime), the dark hose, 
the purple silk, and the white cotton, the latter 
the special affectation of the dandy Jew. What 
a medley, but what character here ! the group 
from knee to ankle forms a picture alone. And 
thus they crowd together for half an hour, whilst 
all ordinary business seems suspended. ^Nothing 
could be done with such a clatter, not to mention 
the heat. 0, how the Arab gutturals, the im- 
possible consonants (quite impossible to unprac- 
tised European lips), were interjected and hurled, 
so to speak, to and fro ! How much was said 
to no purpose, how incoherent it all seemed, and 
how we wished for a few vowels to cool the air ! 
In half an hour a calm has set in, and the 
steady business of the day is allowed to go for- 



THE BAZAAR. 105 



ward; we may now smoke our pipes in peace, 
and from a quiet corner watch the proceedings 
almost unobserved, asking ourselves a question 
or two suggested by the foregoing scene. Is ex- 
pression really worth anything] Is the exhibi- 
tion of passion much more than acting] Shall 
gray beards and flowing robes carry dignity with 
them any more, if a haggle about old clothes can 
produce it in five minutes? 

Here we sit and watch for hours, wondering 
at the apparently endless variety of the patterns 
and colors of the fabrics exposed for sale; and 
— perhaps we dose, perhaps we dream. Is it the 
effect of the hachshish 1 Is it the strong coffee 1 
Are we indeed dreaming, or is the auction a 
sham 1 Surely that pretty bright handkerchief — 
now held up and eagerly scanned by bleared old 
eyes, now crumpled and drawn sharply between 
haggard ringers — is an old friend, and has no 

business in a sale like this ! Let us rub our eyes 
5* 



106 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

and try and remember where we have seen it 
before. Yes, — there is no mistaking the pattern, 
— we have seen it in Spain. It was bound tur- 
banwise round the head of a woman who per- 
formed in the bull-ring at Seville, on the occa- 
sion of a particularly high and rollicking festival 
of the " Catholic Church " ; it was handed out of 
a diligence window one dark night on the Sierra 
Morena, when a mule had broken its leg, and 
the only method of getting it along was to tie 
the injured limb to the girth, and let the animal 
hop on three legs for the rest of the way ; it 
found its way into the Tyrol, worn as a sash; 
it was in the market-place at Bastia in Corsica, 
in the hands of a maiden selling fruit ; it flaunted 
at Marseilles, drying in the wind on a ship's 
spar ; and the last time we saw it, if our mem- 
ory serves us well, it was carefully taken from a 
drawer in a little shop, " Au Bey <$ Alger" in the 
Rue de Eivoli in Paris, and offered to us by 



THE BAZAAR. 107 



that greatest of all humbugs, Mustapha, as the 
latest Algerian thing in neckties, which he asked 
fifteen francs for, and would gladly part with for 
three. 

It was a pattern we knew by heart, that we 
meet with in all parts of the world, thanks to 
the universality of Manchester cottons. But the 
pattern was simple and good, nothing but an ar- 
rangement of red and black stripes on a maize 
ground, and therein lay its success. It had its 
origin in the first principles of decoration, it 
trangressed no law or canon of taste, it was easily 
and cheaply made (as all the best patterns are), 
and so it travelled round the world, and the imi- 
tation work came to be sold in, perhaps, the very 
bazaar whence the pattern first came, and its 
originators squabbled over the possession of it 
as of something unique. 

But we can hardly regret the repetition of these 
Moorish patterns, for they are useful in such 



108 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

a variety of ways. Wind one of the handker- 
chiefs in and out amongst dark tresses, and see 
what richness it gives ; make a turban of it for 
a negress's head ; tie it nattily under the chin 
of a little Parisienne, and, hey presto — she is 
pretty ! make a sash of it, or throw it loosely 
on the ground, and the effect is graceful and 
charming to the eye. In some Japanese and 
Chinese materials we may meet with more bril- 
liant achievements in positive colors; but the 
Moors seem to excel all other nations in taste, 
and in their skilful juxtaposition of tints. "We 
have seen a Moorish designer hard at work, with 
a box of butterflies' wings for his school of design, 
and we might, perhaps, take the hint at home. 

But we must leave the Moors and their beau- 
tiful fabrics for a while, and glance at the Arab 
quarter of the town. We shall see the latter 
by and by in the plains and in their tents in 
their traditionary aspect ; but here we come in 



THE BAZAAR. 109 



contact with a somewhat renegade and disrepu- 
table race, who hang, as it were, on the outskirts 
of civilization. Many of them have come from 
the neighboring villages and from their camps 
across the plains of the Sahel, and have set up 
a market of their own, where they are in full 
activity, trading with each other aud with the 
Frank. * Here they may be seen by hundreds, — 
some buying and selling, some fighting, and not 
unfrequently cursing one another heartily ; others 
ranged close together in rows upon the ground, 
like so many white loaves ready for baking. 
Calm they are, and almost dignified in appear- 
ance, when sitting smoking in conclave ; but only 
give them something to quarrel about, touch 
them up ever so little on their irritable side, and 
they will beat Geneva washerwomen for clatter. 

* This market-place is a sort of commercial neutral ground, 
where both Arabs and Kabyles meet the French in the strictest 
amity, and cheat them if they can. 



110 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

Take them individually, these trading men, who 
have had years of intercourse with their French 
conquerors, and they disappoint us altogether. 
They are no longer true followers of the Prophet, 
although they are a great obstruction to traffic 
by spreading carpets on the ground in the mid- 
dle of the road, and prostrating themselves to- 
wards Mahomet and the sun. Trade — paltry, 
mean, and cowardly as it makes men — has done 
the Arab irreparable harm : it has taught him to 
believe in counterfeits and little swindles as a 
legitimate mode of life, to pass bad money, and 
to cringe to a conqueror because he could make 
money thereby. He could not do these things 
in the old days, with his face to the sun. 

The Arab is generally pictured to us in his tent 
or with his tribe, calm, dignified, and brave, and 
perhaps we may meet with him thus on the other 
side of the Sahel; but here in Algiers he is a 
metamorphosed creature. The camels that crouch 



MODERN ARABS. Ill 

upon the ground, and scream and bite at passers- 
by, are more dignified and consistent in their 
ill-tempered generation than these " Sons of the 
Prophet," these "Lights of Truth." 

And they have actually caught European tricks. 
What shall we say when two Arabs meet in the 
street, and after a few words interchanged, pass 
away from each other with a quickened, jaunty 
step, like two city men, who have "lost time," 
and must make it up by a spurt ! Shall we re- 
spect our noble Arab any more when we see him 
walking abroad with a stereotyped, plausible smile 
upon his face, every action indicating an eye to 
the main chancel* 

* It may seem a stretch of fancy, but even the bournons 
itself, with its classic outline and flowing folds, loses half 
its dignity and picturesqueness on these men. It has been 
rather vulgarized of late years in Western Europe ; and 
when we see it carried on the arm of an Arab (as we do 
sometimes), there is a suggestion of opera stalls, and linger- 
ing last good-nights on unromantic doorsteps, that is fatal to 
its patriarchal character. 



112 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

A step lower, of which there are too many ex- 
amples in the crowd, and there is a sadder meta- 
morphose yet, — the patriarch turned scamp ; one 
who has left his family and his tribe to seek his 
fortune. Look at him, with his ragged bournous, 
his dirt, and his cringing ways, and contrast his 
life now with what he has voluntarily abandoned. 
0, how civilization has lowered him in his own 
eyes ; how his courage has turned to bravado and 
his tact to cunning ; how even natural affection 
has languished, and family ties are but threads 
of the lightest tissue ! He has failed in his en- 
deavor to trade, he has disobeyed the Koran, and 
is an outcast and unclean, — one of the waifs and 
strays of cities ! 

As we wend our way homeward, as John Bun- 
yan says, " thinking of these things," we see two 
tall white figures go down to the water side, like 
the monks in Millais's picture of " A Dream of the 
Past." They bow their heads by the seashore, in 



MODERN ARABS. 113 

the evening light, and their reflections are re- 
peated in the water. It is the hour of prayer ; 
what are they doing] They are fishing with a 
modern rod and line, and their little floats are 
painted with the tricolor. 







S3 
< 

Q 

o 
►J 



CHAPTEE VI. 

THE BOUZAREAH. A STORM. 

IT would be passing over the most enjoyable 
part of our life abroad, if we omitted all 
mention of those delightful days spent on the 
hillsides of Mustapha, on the heights of the 
Bouzareah, and indeed everywhere in the neigh- 
borhood of Algiers, sketching in winter time in 
the open air. 

Odors of orange-groves, the aromatic scent of 
cedars, the sweet breath of wild flowers, roses, 
honeysuckles, and violets, should pervade this 
page i something should be done, which no words 
can accomplish, to give the true impression of the 
scene, to picture the luxuriant growth of vege- 



116 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

tation, radiant in a sunshine which to a North- 
erner is unknown ; to realize in any method of 
description the sense of calm enjoyment of liv- 
ing this pure life in a climate neither too hot 
nor too cold, neither too enervating nor too 
exciting, of watching the serene days decline 
into sunsets that light the Kabyle Hills with 
crests of gold, and end in sudden twilights that 
spread a weird unearthly light across the silver 
sea. 

We take our knapsacks and walk off merrily 
enough on the bright December mornings, often 
before the morning gun has fired or the city is 
fully awake. If we go out at the eastern gate 
and keep along near the seashore in the direction 
of the Maison Carrie (a French fort, now used 
as a prison), we obtain fine views of the bay, and 
of the town of Algiers itself, with its mole and 
harbor stretching out far into the sea. There is 
plenty to interest us here, if it is only in sketch- 



SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 117 

ing the wild palmettos, or in watching the half- 
wild Arabs who camp in the neighborhood, and 
build mud huts which they affect to call cafes, 
and where we can, if we please, obtain rest and 
shelter from the midday sun, and a considera- 
ble amount of " stuffiness " for one sou. But 
there is no need to trouble them, as there are 
plenty of shady valleys and cactus-hedges to 
keep off the sun's rays ; the only disturbers of 
our peace are the dogs who guard the Arab en- 
campments, and have to be diligently kept off 
with stones. 

Perhaps the best spots for quiet work are the 
precincts of the Marabouts' tombs, where we can 
take refuge unobserved behind some old wall, and 
return quietly to the same spot day after day. 
And here, as one experience of sketching from 
Nature, let us allude to the theory (laid down 
pretty confidently by those who have never re- 
duced it to practice), that one great advantage of 



118 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

this climate is, that you may work at the same 
sketch from day to day, and continue it where 
you left off! You can do nothing of the 
kind. If your drawing is worth anything, it will 
at least have recorded something of the varying 
phases of light and shade that really alter every 
hour. 

Let us take an example. About six feet from 
us, at eight o'clock in the morning, the sheer 
white wall of a Moslem tomb is glowing with a 
white heat, and across it are cast the shadows 
of three palm-leaves, which at a little distance 
have the contrasted effect of the blackness of 
night.* Approach a little nearer and examine 
the real color of these photographic leaf-lines, 
shade off, with the hand, as much as possible of 
the wall, the sky, and the reflected light from 

* Under some conditions of the atmosphere we have ob- 
tained more perfect outlines of the leaves of the aloe, with 
their curiously indented edges and spear-points, from their 
sliadows rather than from the leaves themselves. 



SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 119 

surrounding leaves, and these dark shadows be- 
come a delicate pearl-gray, deepening into mauve, 
or partaking sometimes of the tints of the rich 
earth below them. They will be deeper yet be- 
fore noon, and pale again, and uncertain and 
fantastic in shape, before sundown. If we sketch 
these shadows only each hour, as they pass from 
left to right upon the wall (laying down a dif- 
ferent wash for the ground each time), and place 
them side by side in our note-book, we shall 
have made some discoveries in light and trans- 
parent shadow tone which will be very valuable 
in after time. Xo two days or two hours are 
under precisely the same atmospheric conditions ; 
the gradations and changes are extraordinary, and 
would scarcely be believed in by any one who 
had not watched them. 

Thus, although we cannot continue a sketch 
once left off, to any purpose, we may obtain an 
infinite and overwhelming variety of work in one 



120 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

day, in the space of a few yards by the side of 
some old well or Marabout's tomb. 

We seldom returned from a day in the country 
without putting up for an hour or two at one 
of the numerous cafes, or caravanserai, built near 
some celebrated spring, with seats placed invit- 
ingly by the roadside, under the shade of trees. 
There were generally a number of Arabs and 
French soldiers collected in the middle of the 
day, drinking coffee, playing at dominoes, or tak- 
ing a siesta on the mats under the cool arcades, 
and often some Arab musicians, who hummed 
and droned monotonous airs ; there were always 
plenty of beggars to improve the occasion, and 
perhaps a group of half-naked boys, who would 
get up an imitation of the " Beni Zouzoug Arabs," 
and go through hideous contortions, inflicting all 
kinds of torments on each other for a few sous. 
It is pleasant to put up at one of these cafes 
during the heat of the day, and to be able to walk 



ARAB CAFES, 



121 



in and take our places quietly amongst the Arabs 
and Moors, without any particular notice or re- 
mark • and delightful (0, how delightful !) to yield 
to the combined influences of the coffee, the hach- 
shish, the tom-tom, and the heat, and fall asleep 
and dream, — dream that the world is standing 
still, that politics and Fenianism are things of 
the past, and that all the people in a hurry are 
dead. Pleasant, and not a 
little perplexing too, when 
waking, for the eye to rest 
on the delicate outline of a 
little window in the wall 
above, which, with its spiral 
columns and graceful pro- 
portions, seems the very 
counterpart in miniature of 
some Gothic cathedral screen. If we examine 
it, it is old and Moorish (these buildings date 
•back several hundred years), and yet so perfect 
6 




122 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

is its similarity to later work, that our ideas on 
orders of architecture become confused and vague. 
We may not attempt to discover the cause of the 
similarity, or indeed to go deeply into questions 
of " style," but we may be tempted to explore 
farther, and if we examine such cafes as, for in- 
stance, those at El Biar or Birkadem, we shall 
find the walls ornamented with arabesques, some- 
times half concealed under whitewash, and the 
arcades and conical-domed roofs and doorways 
covered with curious patterns. 

In this way we pass the day, often lingering 
about one spot in most vagrant fashion, till 
nightfall, when the last diligence comes crashing 
in, and stops to change its wretched horses. We 
take our places quickly in the interteur, and are 
wedged in between little soft white figures with 
black eyes and stained finger-nails, who stare at 
us with a fixed and stony stare, all the way back 
to Algiers. Another day we spend in the Jardin 



"JARDIN D'ESSAI: 1 123 

d'Essai, the garden of acclimatization, where we 
may wander in December amidst groves of sum- 
mer flowers, and where every variety of tree and 
shrub is brought together for study and com- 
parison. Through the kindness of the director, 
we are enabled to make studies of some rare and 
curious tropical plants ; but there is a little too 
much formality and an artificial atmosphere about 
the place, that spoils it for sketching, although 
nothing can control, or render formal, the wild 
strength of the gigantic aloes, or make the palm- 
trees grow in line. 

From the " Garden of Marengo," just outside 
the western gates, we obtain the sketch given 
on the opposite page ; and from the heights behind 
the Casbah, some beautiful distant views across 
the plain of the Mitidja. Of one of these an 
artistic traveller writes : " Standing on a ridge 
of the Sahel, far beneath lies the Bay of Algiers, 
from this particular point thrown into a curve 



i 1 j | ; i'V'j 




< 



H 

> 

O 



THE BOUZEREAH. 125 


so exquisite and subtle as to be wellnigh inimi- 
table by art, the value of the curve being enhanced 
by the long level line of the Mitidja plain im- 
mediately behind, furnishing the horizontal line 
of repose so indispensable to calm beauty of land- 
scape j whilst in the background the faintly 
indicated serrated summits of the Atlas chain 
preserve the whole picture from monotony. The 
curve of shore, the horizontal bar of plain, the 
scarcely more than suggested angles of the moun- 
tains, form a combination of contrasting yet 
harmonizing lines of infinite loveliness, which 
Xature would ever paint anew for us in the 
fresh tints of the morning, with a brush dipped 
in golden sunshine and soft filmy mist, and with 
a broad sweep of cool blue shadow over the fore- 
ground." 

But our favorite rendezvous, our principal 
" Champ de Mars," was a little Arab cemetery, 
about six miles from Algiers, on the heights 



126 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

westward, in the direction of Sidi Ferruch, and 
near to a little Arab village called the " Bou- 
zareah." This spot combined a wondrous view 
both of sea and land, with a foreground of beauty 
not easy to depict. It was a half-deserted ceme- 
tery, with tombs of Marabout priests over which 
the palm-trees waved, and little gravestones here 
and there surmounted with crescents. Sheltered 
from the sun's rays, hidden from the sight of 
passers-by, surrounded with a profusion of aloes, 
palms, cacti, and an infinite variety of shrubs 
and flowers peeping out between the palmettos, 
that spread their leaves like fans upon the 
ground, — it combined everything that could be 
desired. 

Here we worked, sitting close to one of the 
tombs for its shade, with the hush of the breeze, 
the distant sighing sound of the sea, the voices 
of bees and butterflies, the flutter of leaves, and 
one other sound that intermingled with strange 



THE BOUZEREAH. 127 

monotony of effect close to our ears, which puzzled 
us sorely to account for at first. It turned out 
to be a snore ; the custodian of one of the tombs 
was sleeping inside with his fathers, little dream- 
ing of our proximity. We struck up an acquaint- 
ance v itli him, after a few days of coyness on his 
part, and finally made him a friend. For a few 
sous a day he acted as outpost for us, to keep 
off Arab boys and any other intruders, and be- 
fore we left was induced to sit and be included 
in a sketch. He winced a little at this, and 
we confess to an inward reproach for having 
thus degraded him. He did not like it, but he 
sat it out and had his portrait taken like any 
Christian dog \ he took money for his sin, and 
finally (by way of expiation, let us hope) drank 
up our dirty palette-water at the end of the 
day! 

If there is one spot in all Algeria most dear 
to a Mussulman's heart, most sacred to a Mara- 



128 ARTISTS AND ARABS, 

bout's memory, it must surely be this peaceful 
garden of aloes and palms, where flowers ever 
grow, where the sun shines from the moment of 
its rising until it sinks beneath the western sea; 
where, if anywhere on this earth, the faithful 
will be the first to know of the Prophet's com- 
ing, and where they will always be ready to meet 
him. But if it be dear to a Mussulman's heart, 
it is also dear to a Christian's, for it has taught 
us more in a few weeks than we can unlearn in 
years. We cannot sit here day by day without 
learning several truths, more forcibly than by any 
teaching of our schools ; taking in, as it were, 
the mysteries of light and shade, and the various 
phases of the atmosphere, — taking them all to 
heart, so that they influence our work for years 
to come. 

How often have we, at the Uffizi or at the 
Louvre, envied the power and skill of a master, 
whose work we have vainly endeavored to imi- 



ALOES AND PALMS. 129 

tate ; and what would we not have given in those 
days, to achieve something that seemed to ap- 
proach, ever so little, to the power and beauty 
of color of a Titian or a Paul Veronese.* 

Is it mere heresy in art, or is it a brighter light 
dawning upon us here, that seems to say that 
we have learned and achieved more, in studying 
the glowing limbs of an Arab child as it plays 
amongst these wild palmettos, because we worked 
with a background of real sea and sky, and be- 
cause in the painting of the child we had not to 
learn any " master's " trick of color, nor to follow 
conventional lines] 

And do we not, amongst other things, learn 
to distinguish between the true and conventional 
rendering of the form, color, and character of 
palm-trees, aloes, and cacti? 

* And have we not, generally, imbibed more of the trick 
or method of color, of the master, than of his inspiration, — 
more, in short, of the real than the ideal? 



130 



ARTISTS AND ARABS. 



First, of the palm. Do we not soon discover 
how much more of beauty, of suggested strength, 
of grace, lightness, 
and variety of color 
and texture, there 
is in this one stem 
that we vainly try 
to depict in a wood 
engraving, than we 
had previously any 
conception of ? And 
how opposed to facts 
are the conventional 
methods of drawing 
palm - trees (often 
with a straight stem 
and uniform leaves looking like a feather broom 
on a straight stick), which we may find in almost 
any illustrated book representing Eastern scenes, 
from Constantinople to the Sea of Galilee ! 




ALOES AND PALMS. 131 

Take, for instance, as a proof of variety in 
color and grandeur of aspect, the group of palm- 
trees at the Bouzareah (one of which we have 
sketched), that have stood guard over the Mo- 
hammedan tombs for perhaps a hundred years; 
stained with time, and shattered with their fierce 
battle with the storms that sweep over the prom- 
ontory with terrible force. Look at the beauty 
of their lines, at the glorious color of their 
young leaves, and the deep orange of those they 
have shed, like the plumage of some gigantic bird ; 
one of their number has fallen from age, and lies 
cross ways on the ground, half concealed in the long 
grass and shrubs, and it has lain there, to our 
knowledge, undisturbed for years. To paint the 
sun setting on these glowing stems, and to catch the 
shadows of their sharp pointed leaves, as they are 
traced at one period of the day on the white walls 
of the tombs, is worth long waiting to be able to 
note down ; and to hit the right tint, to depict 
such shadows truly, is an exciting triumph to us. 



132 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 



Second, of the aloe ; and here we make as great 
a discovery as with the palm. Have we not been 
taught (in paintings) from our youth up, that the 
aloe puts forth its blue riband-like leaves in uniform 
fashion, like so many starched pennants, which 
painters often express with one or two strokes of 
the brush ; and are we not told by botanists that 
it flowers but once in a hundred years ? 

Look at that aloe hedge-row a little distance 
from us, that stretches across the country like a 
long blue rippling wave on a calm sea, and which, 
as we approach it, seems thrown up fantastically 
and irregularly by breakers to a height of six or 
eight feet, and which (like the sea), on a nearer 
view, changes its opaque cold blue tint to a rich 
transparent green and gold. Approach them 
closely, walk under their colossal leaves, avoid 
their sharp spear-points, and touch their soft pulpy 
stems. What wonderful variety there is in their 
forms, what transparent beauty of color; what 



SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 133 

eccentric shadows they cast upon each other, and 
with what a grand spiral sweep some of the young 
shoots rear upwards ! So tender and pliable are 
they, that in some positions a child might snap 
their leaves, and yet so wonderful is the distribu- 
tion of strength, that they would resist at spear- 
point the approach, of a lion, and almost turn 
a charge of cavalry. If we snap off the point of 
one of the leaves it is a needle, and a thread 
clings to it which we may peel off down the 
stem a yard long, — needle and thread, — nature- 
pointed, nature-threaded ! Should not artists see 
these things ? Should not poets dream of them *? 

Here we are inclined to ask, if the aloe flowers 
but once in a hundred years, how is it that every- 
where in Algeria we see plants of all ages with 
their long flowering stems, some ten or twelve 
feet high] Have they combined this year to 
flower, or are botanists at fault 1 ? 

Of the cactus, which also grows in wild pro- 



134 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

fusion, we could say almost as much as of the 
palms and aloes, but it might seem like repetition. 
Suffice it, that our studies of their separate leaves 
were the minutest and most rewarding labor we 
achieved, and that, until we had painted the cactus 
and the palmetto growing together, we had never 
understood the meaning of " tropical vegetation." 
Many other subjects we obtain at the Bouza- 
reah ; simple perhaps, and apparently not worth 
recording, but of immense value to a student of 
nature. Is it nothing, for instance, for a painter 
to have springing up before him, in this clear 
atmosphere, delicate stems of grass, six feet high, 
falling over in spray of golden leaves against a 
background of blue sea ; darting upward, sheer, 
bright, and transparent from a bank covered with 
the prickly pear, that looks, by contrast, like -the 
rock-work from which a fountain springs ] Is it 
nothing to see amongst all this wondrous over- 
growth of gigantic leaves, and amongst the tender 



SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 135 

creepers and the flowers, the curious knotted and 
twisted stem of the vine, trailing serpent-like on 
the ground, its surface worn smooth with time ] 

It is well worth coming to Xorth Africa in 
winter, if only to see the flowers ; but of these 
we cannot trust ourselves to speak, — they must 
be seen and painted. 

It is difficult to tear ourselves away from this 
spot, and especially tempting to dwell upon these 
details, because they have seldom been treated of 
before ; but perhaps the question may occur to 
some, Are such subjects as we have depicted 
worth painting, or, indeed, of any prolonged or 
separate study ] Let us endeavor to answer it 
by another question. Are the waves worth paint- 
ing, by themselves] Has it not occurred to one 
or two artists (not to many, we admit) that the 
waves of the sea have never yet been adequately 
painted, and have never had their due, so to speak, 
because it has always been considered necessary 



136 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

to introduce something else into the composition, 
be it only a rope, a spar, or a deserted ship 1 Has 
it not been discovered (though only of late years) 
that there is scope for imagination and poetry, 
and all the elements of a great and enthralling 
picture, in the drawing of waves alone; and 
should there not be, if nobly treated, interest 
enough in a group of colossal vegetation in a 
brilliant atmosphere, without the usual conven- 
tional adjuncts of figures and buildings ] 

So far, whilst sketching at the Bouzareah, we 
have spoken only of the foreground ; but we 
have been all the time in the presence of the most 
wonderful panorama of sea and land, and have 
watched so many changing aspects from these 
heights, that we might fill a chapter in describ- 
ing them alone. The view northward over the 
Mediterranean, westward towards Sidi Ferruch, 
southward across the plains to the Atlas, eastward 
towards Algiers and the mountains of Kabylia 



AN AFRICAN STORM. 137 

beyond ; each point so distant from the other 
that, according to the wind or time of day, it 
partook of quite distinct aspects, fill up so many 
pictures in our mind's eye that a book might be 
written, called " The Bouzareah," as seen under 
the different phases of sunshine and storm. 

It has often been objected to these Eastern 
scenes, that they have " no atmosphere," and no 
gradation of middle distance ; that there is not 
enough repose about them, that they lack mys- 
tery and are altogether wanting in the poetry 
of cloudland. But there are clouds. We have 
seen, for the last few mornings (looking through 
the arched windows of the gr«at aloe-leaves), little 
companies of small white clouds, casting clearly 
defined shadows across the distant sea, and break- 
ing up the horizon line with their soft white 

folds 

" They come like shadows, so depart," 

reappearing and disappearing by some myste- 
rious law, but seldom culminating in rain. 



138 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

Yes, there are clouds. Look this time far 
away towards the horizon line across the bay, and 
watch that rolling sea which looks like foam, that 
rises higher and higher as we watch it, darkening 
the sky, and soon enveloping us in a kind of sea- 
fog, through which the sun gleams dimly red, 
whilst the white walls of the tombs appear cold 
and gray against a leaden sky. See it all pass 
away again across the plain of the Mitidja, and 
disappear in the shadows of the lesser Atlas. 
There is a hush in the breeze and all is bright 
again, but a storm is coming. 

Take shelter, if you have courage, inside one 
of the Marabouts' tombs (there is plenty of space), 
whilst a tempest rages that should wake the dead 
before Mahomet's coming. Sit and wait in there, 
perhaps an hour, whilst one or two strong gusts of 
wind pass over, and then all is still again; and 
so dark that we can see nothing inside but the 
light of a pipe in one corner. We get impatient, 



AN AFRICAN STORM. 139 

thinking that it is passing off. But it comes at 
last. It breaks over the tombs, and tears through 
the plantation, with a tremendous surging sound, 
putting to flight the Arabs on guard, who wrap 
their bournouses about them and hurry off to the 
village, with the cry of " Allah il Allah " ; leaving 
the care of the tombs to the palms, that have stood 
guard over them so long. 0, how they fight and 
struggle in the wind ! how they creak, and moan, 
and strike against one another, like human crea- 
tures in the thick of battle ! How they rally side 
by side, and wrestle with the wind, — crashing 
down suddenly against the walls of the tomb, and 
scattering their leaves over us ; then rallying again, 
and fighting the storm with human energy and 
persistence ! 

It is a fearful sight, — the rain falling in masses, 
but nearly horizontally, and with such density that 
we can see but a few yards from our place of 
shelter ; and it is a fearful sound, to hear the 
palm-trees shriek in the wind. 



140 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

There was one part of the scene we could not 
describe, one which no other than Dante's pen 
or Dore's pencil could give any idea of; we could 
not depict the confused muttering sound and 
grinding clatter (if we may call it so) that the 
battered and wounded aloes made amongst them- 
selves, like maimed and dying combatants trodden 
under foot. Many scenes in nature have been 
compared to a battle-field; we have seen sheaves 
of corn blown about by the wind, looking like the 
tents of a routed host ; but this scene was beyond 
parallel, — the hideous contortion, the melancholy 
aspect of destruction, the disfigured limbs in 
hopeless wreck, the weird and ghastly forms that 
writhed and groaned aloud, as the storm made 
havoc with them. 

And they made havoc with each other. What 
would the reader say, if he saw the wounds in- 
flicted by some of the young leaves on the parent 
stems, — how they pierce and transfix, and some- 



AN AFRICAN STORM. 141 

times saw into each other, with their sharp ser- 
rated edges, as they sway backwards and forwards 
in the wind. He would say perhaps that no sea- 
monster or devil-fish could seem more horrible, 
and we could wish him no wilder vision than 
to be near them at night, when disturbed by the 
wind. 

We have scarcely alluded to the palmetto leaves 
and branches that rilled the air, to the sound of 
rushing water, to the distant roar of the sea, nor 
to many other aspects of the storm. It lasted not 
much more than an hour, but the water covered 
the floor of our little temple before the rain sub- 
sided, and the ground a few feet off where we had 
sat was completely under water. Everything was 
steaming with vapor, but the land was refreshed, 
and the dark earth was richer than we had seen 
it for months, — there would be no dust in Algiers 
until to-morrow. 




ARABS. 



CHAPTEE VII. 



BLIDAH. MEDEAH. THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS. 

THE Atlas Mountains, of which we have 
spoken so often, are almost separated from 
the hills of the Sahel on which the town of Algiers 
is built, by the broad plain of the Mitidja, aver- 
aging between twenty and thirty miles across ; and 
at the inland extremity of this plain, nestling close 
under the shadow of the lesser Atlas, is situated 
the town of Elidah, half Arab, half French, with 
its little population of European colonists and 
traders, — principally orange-merchants, who here 
pass their monotonous, semi-successful lives, varied 
by occasional earthquakes and Arab emeutes. 
It was not particularly to see Blidah, but be- 



144 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

cause it was on the high-road to the Atlas Moun- 
tains, and to Medeah, a strongly fortified town 
situated 2,900 feet above the sea-level, — ap- 
proached by a military road cut through the 
celebrated gorge of "La Chiffa," — that two of 
our party left Algiers on horseback, on the 14th 
of December, on a sketching expedition. 

We made many other interesting tours ; but it 
will be sufficient for our purpose to speak of two 
expeditions, — the one to Medeah, the other to 
the celebrated " Fort Xapoleon," on the Kabyle 
Hills. 

It seems to say something for the peculiarly 
invigorating character of the climate, that, at an 
average temperature of 70° Fahrenheit, our little 
horses did their thirty or forty miles a day, laden 
with our well- stored saddle-bags and sketching 
paraphernalia ; and it speaks volumes for the 
security with which travellers can move about 
from town to town, that we were merely by 



BIRKADEM. H5 



chance provided with firearms, and travelled with- 
out guide or escort.* 

We pass through the eastern gate of Algiers 
before sunrise, and winding up the hills behind 
Mustapha Superieure (keeping to the road), begin 
to descend on the southern side, and have the 
broad plain of the Mitidja before us, just as the 
day is breaking. As we come down towards the 
plain we pass several farms of the French colo- 
nists, and here and there a tobacco plantation 
where both Arabs and French are employed. At 
Eirkadem, which is in the midst of a farming 
district, we halt to breakfast, and run considera- 
ble risk of getting into a controversy on French 
colonization with some friendly and pleasant but 
rather desponding agriculturists. But, happily for 
ourselves and for our readers, we do not attempt 
to master the subject, and with a sketch of the 

* At the time we speak of journeys into the interior were 
much less frequent than they are now, when there is a rail- 
way to Blidah and a diligence to the Fort. Napoleon. 
7 j 



146 ARTISTS AND ARABS, 

little Moorish cafe with its marble columns and 
arcades, we continue our journey ; over a wide 
waste, — half moorland, half desert, — passing at 
intervals little oases of cultivation, with houses, 
shrubs, and gardens surrounding. Straight before 
us, apparently only a few miles off, but in reality 
twenty, stretches the chain of the lesser Atlas, 
the dark shadows here and there pointing out 
the approaches to a higher range beyond. 

At the foot of the mountains we can distinctly 
see with our glasses the white Moorish houses and 
villas that are built near Blidah, and the thick 
clusters of trees that shelter them. Our way 
across the plain for the next two or three hours 
is rather solitary, and although we keep up a 
steady pace, we seem to get no nearer to our 
destination. We pass a number of Arabs lead- 
ing camels, and overtake a troop of twenty or 
thirty donkeys, laden with goods and ridden by 
their owners (who sit upon the top of their piles), 



BOUFFARIK. 147 



shambling along almost as fast as a hcrse can trot. 
They beat us hollow before noon, because they 
never stop, and reach Bouffarik, the midday rest- 
ing-place, long before us. 

At Bouffarik we are again amongst the colonists, 
and hear the peculiar French dialect of Provence 
and Languedoc, with occasional snatches of Ger- 
man and Maltese. We rest until about two hours 
of sunset, and become thoroughly imbued with 
the idea that we must be again in the south of 
France ; so completely have the French realized, 
in the midst of an African plain, the dull uni- 
formity of a poor French town, with its "place," 
its one street of cobble-stones, and its two rows 
of trees. Here we can obtain bad coffee, just as 
we can in France, and read the Moniteur, but 
four days old. It is altogether French, and when 
the white Arab mare belonging to one of our 
party turns restive at starting again, and proceeds 
through the village on its hind legs, it is just in 



148 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

time to remind us that it was here that Horace' 
Vernet worked, and painted those rampant white 
steeds that we know so well in the centre of his i 
battle pictures. The war-horse (with the light 
upon him) was more to Horace Vernet, perhaps, 
than the glory of the whole plain of the Mitidja ; , 
but how he could have lived in Algeria so long, 
and have been so little influenced by the scene 
around him, it is hard to tell. 

It is tempting (indeed it is almost impossible 
to avoid) at Bouffarik, going a little into the ques- 
tion of colonization, and speaking from' personal 
observation of the progress made during the last 
few years. But as English people care little or 
nothing for the prospects of Algeria, we will merely 
remark, en passant, that the insurmountable evil of 
Algeria being too near the home country seems 
to blight its prospects even here, and that the 
want of confidence displayed by private capitalists 
retards all progress. Nearly all the capital em- 



ARAB FARMERS. 149 

i 
ployed by the colonists at Bouffarik and Blidah 

has been raised by a paternal government ; but, 
notwithstanding help from the home country, the 
tide of wealth neither flows nor ebbs with great 
rapidity. 

At BoufTarik we see the Arabs calmly settled 
under French rule, and learning the arts of peace ; 
taking to husbandry and steam ploughs, and other- 
wise progressing in a scientific and peaceful direc- 
tion. We see them in the evening, sitting by 
their cottages with their half-naked children, look- 
ing prosperous and happy enough, and hear them 
droning to them in that monotonous "sing-song'' 
that is so irritating to the ear. There is a musician 
at the door of our hostelry now, who is as great 
a nuisance as any Italian organ-grinder in May- 
fair ; he taps on a little piece of stretched parch- 
ment, and howls without ceasing. It is given to 
the inhabitants of some countries, who have what 
is commonly called "no ear for music," to hum 



150 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

— 1 ■ 

and to drone in more sensitive ears to the point 
of distraction, and it seems to be the special attri- 
bute of the Arab to fill the air with monotonous 
sounds ; when he is on a journey or resting from 
it, it is the same, — he hums and moans like a 
creature in torment. In contact with Europeans 
we perhaps see him at his worst ; for, however 
orderly and useful a member of society he may 
be, however neat and clean, there is something 
cringing and artificial in him at the best. But 
we must hasten on to Blidah. 

Again we cross a wide plain, again do we over- 
take and are overtaken by the tribe of donkeys ; 
and just as the sun goes down we enter the city 
gates together, dismounting in the principal square, 
which is filled with idlers, chiefly French soldiers 
and poor Arabs who have learned to beg. We 
had chosen the time for this journey when the 
moon was nearly full, and our first near view of 
the town was by moonlight. Nothing can be 



BLIDAH. 151 



conceived more beautiful than Blidah by night, 
with its little white domes and towers, and the 
mountains looming indistinctly in the background. 
In the Moorish quarter the tower of the principal 
Mosque stands out clearly defined in the moon- 
light, whilst all around it cluster the little flat- 
roofed houses, set in masses of dark foliage, — the 
olives and the date-trees, and the sharp-pointed 
spires of the cypresses just tinged with a silver 
light. So peaceful, so beautiful does it look at 
night, so complete the repose with which we have 
always associated Blidah, that it is a rude disen- 
chantment to learn that but a few years ago this 
city was upheaved and tossed about like the 
waves of the sea. In 1825 eight or nine thou- 
sand people perished from an earthquake ; and in 
1866 a lady who was staying at the hotel thus 
wrote home to her friends : — 

" I was roused from sleep by a sound as of some one 
beating the floor above and the walls on every side. 



152 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

It increased rapidly in violence, till the whole house 
shook and rocked and seemed giving way beneath our 
feet. I saw the wall in the corner of the room split 
open, and immediately afterwards masses of plaster fell 
from the ceiling and walls, bringing clouds of dust and 
a darkness as of night. 

" On the Place it was a fearful scene : people came 
tearing down the neighboring streets, women and 
children ran aimlessly hither and thither, shrieking 
wildly, men uttering hoarse sounds of terror, whilst 
the ground heaved and trembled beneath our feet, and 
we gazed at the surrounding houses in expectant 
horror; it seemed as if they must fall like a pack 
of cards. The young trees rocked and swayed, the 
flagstaff waved backwards and forwards, — the wind 
moaning, the rain pouring down, whilst above all 
rose, ever and anon, the sound of cavalry trumpets 
and the rolling of the drum, calling on the troops to 
quit their tottering barracks. The Arabs alone stalked 
about unmoved, shrugging their shoulders and mut- 
tering, 'It is destiny!'" , 

The air is delightful at Blidah, and the little 
country houses, with their groves of orange- trees, 



LA CHI F FA. 153 



their gardens and vineyards, have been pointed 
out by travellers as some of the most desirable 
spots on earth. The extract above may tend to 
qualify the longings of some people ; but we 
should be inclined to take our chance at Blidah, 
as the Neapolitans do near Vesuvius, — there are 
so many compensations. 

Early in the morning we are again on our way, 
and as we leave the western gate, the donkeys, 
with their dirty drivers, scramble out with us and 
again play the game of the tortoise and the hare. 
The gorge of La ChifFa is one of the principal ap- 
proaches to the mountains, through which a mili- 
tary road is cut to Medeah. The first part is 
wild and rocky, the road passing between almost 
perpendicular cliffs, carried sometimes by masonry 
over a chasm at a height of several hundred feet. 
We ride for miles through a valley of almost 
solitary grandeur, with no sounds but the rush- 
ing of the torrent and the occasional cries of mon- 
7* 



154 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

keys. We pass by one celebrated waterfall called 
the "Kuisseau des Singes," and are otherwise re- 
minded of the presence of monkeys by their 
pelting us with large stones, which they dislodge 
from their hiding-places above our heads. 

We are at times so shut in by the rocks that 
we can scarcely discover any outlet ; but after a 
few hours' ascent we come suddenly upon quite 
a different scene. What is it that delights the 
eye and that thrills us with pleasurable emotions, 
calling up memories of green lanes and England, 
pastoral ] 'T is the plash of water, and the trick- 
ling, tinkling play of a running stream, winding 
and winding down to the swollen torrent that we 
crossed just now. Here under the shadow and 
shelter of the mountains — refreshed by rains that 
they in the plains know not of, and where the 
heat of a midday sun can scarcely approach — we 
find a cottage, a little farm, green pastures, cattle 
grazing, trees, flowers, and children ; the stream 



AN OASTS. 155 



flowing through all, bright, deep, and sparkling, 
with green banks, bulrushes and lilies of the valley 
of the Atlas. A few poor emigrants have settled 
down in this corner of the world as quietly, and 
we may add as securely, as if a sandy plain did 
not divide them from everything kindred and 
civilized. 

We make our midday halt under the shade of 
chestnut-trees, and sketch ; one great defect of our 
drawings being that they are far too pastoral, — 
they would not be admitted by judges to represent 
Africa at all ! Nothing in this land of strong 
contrasts could equal the change from Nature, 
untilled, unfruitful, stern, and forbidding, to this 
little farm-house, as it might be in Wales, sur- 
rounded by trees and watered by a sparkling 
stream. 

Continuing our journey up the gorge, walking, 
riding, clambering, and resting by turns, we do 
not reach Medeah until after dark. During the 



156 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

last few miles our horses are troublesome, and 
will not be persuaded to pass close to any rock 
or brushwood, being evidently nervous of some 
sudden attack or surprise ; and so we creep along 
silently and in single file, trusting chiefly to our 
horses to keep to the path. At last the long- 
looked-for lights of Medeah appear, and in a 
quarter of an hour afterwards we are inside the 
fortifications ; and with a " Voyageurs, monsieur " 
to the sentinel at the gate, we pass under the dark 
arches of a Eoman aqueduct, — casting a deep 
shadow over the town as the moon shines out, 
now obscured again by a passing cloud, like some 
solemn dissolving view of Eoman power, or phan- 
tom monument of the past. 

At Medeah we find everything much the same 
as at Blidah ; a little rougher and poorer perhaps, 
but the same mixture of French and Moorish 
buildings. Fine old mosques, courtyards after the 
style of the Alhambra, and carved doorways of 



THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS. 157 

very early date; but brick fortifications, young 
French soldiers, estaminets, and a " Place " with 
half-dead trees, are more prominent features; and 
here, at a height of nearly 3,000 feet above the 
sea, set deep in the heart of the Atlas, civilization 
may again be seen doing its work, — the Arabs 
indulging in absinthe freely, and playing at cards 
with their conquerors. 

The beautiful mountain scenery south of Medeah 
led us to spend some time in sketching and in ex- 
ploring the country. In spite of its wildness and 
solitariness we could wander about with perfect 
security, within a day or two's journey of the 
French outposts. The crisp keen air at this alti- 
tude tempted us on and on, through the most 
deserted region that can be imagined. The moun- 
tain-ranges to the south were like an undulating 
sea, divided from us by lesser hills and little 
plains, with here and there valleys, green and 
cultivated ; but the prevailing character of the 



158 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

scenery was rocky and barren. The great beauty 
was in the clouds that passed over at intervals, 
spreading a grateful shade, and casting wonderful 
shadows on the rocks. The rain would fall heavily 
through them sometimes for three or four minutes, 
like summer showers, and the little dried-up tor- 
rent beds would trickle for a while ; the Arabs 
would collect a few drops, and then all would be 
gone, — the clouds, the rivulets, and every sign 
of moisture on the ground, — and the mountains 
would stand out sharp and clear against the sky, 
with that curious pinky hue so often seen in the 
background of pictures of Eastern scenes. 

Here we could pitch our tent in the deepest 
solitude, and romance as much as we pleased with- 
out fear of interruption. The only variation to 
the almost death-like silence that prevailed would 
be the distant cry of a jackall, which disturbed 
us for a moment, or the moaning of the wind in 
some far-off valley, for the air seemed never still 



AMERICAN TRAVELLERS. 159 

on these heights. A stray monkey or two would 
come and furtively peep at our proceedings, but 
would be off again in an instant, and there were 
no birds ; indeed, since we left Blidah we had 
scarcely heard their voices. The few Arab tribes 
that cultivated the valleys seldom came near us; 
so that we sometimes heard no voices but our own 
from morning till night. 

One day proved an exception. We had been 
making a drawing of the prospect due south, in 
order to get the effect of the sun's rays upon a 
sandy plateau that stretched between us and the 
next range of mountains : it was little more than 
a study of color and effect, for there was not much 
to break the monotony of the subject, — a sand- 
plain bounded by barren rocks. We had nearly 
finished our work, when two dark specks appeared 
suddenly on the sky-line, and quickly descending 
the rocks, began to cross the plain towards us. 
With our telescope we soon made out that they 



160 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 



were horsemen at full gallop, and we could tell l 
this, not by the figures themselves, but by the I 
long shadows that the afternoon sun cast fromi 
them upon the plain. In a few minutes they 
rode up to our tent. They were not, as our 
porters had insisted, some Arabs on a reconnoi- 
tring expedition, but two American gentlemen on 
hired horses from Algiers, who were scampering; 
about the country without any guide or escort. 
They had come from Milianah that day, they 
would be at Blidah to-morrow, and at Algiers I 
the next day, in time to "catch the boat for 
Europe ! " 

There was an end to all romance about desert 
scenes and being " alone with Nature " ; we could i 
not get rid of the Western world; we were tourists, , 
and nothing more. But it was pleasant to hear, 
the English language spoken, and delightful to) 
record that these gentlemen neither bragged of 
their exploits nor favored us with what are called 1 



AFRICAN LIONS. 161 

in Europe " Americanisms." In short, we are able 
to speak of our interview (they came back with us 
as far as Medeah) without repeating any of those 
bits of smart conversation that seem inseparable 
from the record of such rencontres. These gentle- 
men had taken a glance at a great deal in four or 
five days, and had been (perhaps it did not much 
matter) once or twice into a little danger ; they 
had seen the cedar forests, the " Fort Kapoleon," 
and the principal sights, and were now on their 
way home. They had, however, done one thing 
in which they evidently felt unmixed satisfaction, 
though they did not express it in so many words, 
— they had been rather farther into the interior 
than any of their countrymen. 

Before leaving the mountains we should answer 
a question that we have been asked repeatedly, 
" What of the African lion, so celebrated by Jules 
Gerard % " AYe answer, that we did not penetrate 
far enough for " sport " of this kind ; indeed, we 

K 



162 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

scarcely ever heard of any lions. Once only our 
horses stopped and trembled violently, and would 
not pass a thicket without a long detour ; and 
once (only once) we heard the lion's roar, not far 
oiF. It is a sound that carries a dread with it 
not soon forgotten, and the solemnity of which, 
when echoed from the mountains, it is not easy 
to describe. Perhaps the only person who was 
ever flippant in speaking of lions was Gordon 
Cumming ; but then he used to go amongst them 
(according to his own account) single-handed, to 
" select specimens " before firing ! 

In the solitude of these mountain wanderings 
we had opportunities of seeing one phase of Arab 
life that we had really come out to see, and which 
was alone worth the journey. We had started 
early one morning from Blidah, but not so early 
that, in deference to the wishes of some of our 
companions, we had first attended service in a 
chapel dedicated to " Our Lady of Succor." We 



RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 163 

went into the little building, which, like some 
rare exotic, was nourishing alone, surrounded by 
the most discordant elements, — situated hard by 
a mosque and close to some noisy Arab dwellings. 
Service was being performed in the usual manner, 
the priests were bowing before a tinsel cross, and 
praying, in a language of their own, to a colored 
print of " Our Lady " in a gilt frame. There 
were the customary chantings, the swinging of 
censers, the creaking of chairs, the interchanging 
of glances, and the paying of sous. Sins were 
confessed through a hole in the wall, and holy 
water was administered to the faithful with a 
brush. Everything was conducted with perfect 
decorum, and was (as it seemed to an eyewit- 
ness) the most materialistic expression of devotion 
it were possible to devise. 

Before the evening of the same day we make 
a halt amongst the mountains. A few yards 
from us we see in the evening light a promon- 



164 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

tory ; upon it some figures, motionless, and nearly 
the same color as the rocks, — Arabs watching the 
setting sun. The twilight has faded so rapidly 
into darkness, that we have soon to put by our 
work, and can see no objects distinctly, excepting 
this promontory ; on which the sun still shines 
through some unseen valley, and lights up the 
figures as they kneel in prayer. The solemnity of 
the scene could hardly be conveyed to the mind 
of the reader in words, its picturesqueness we 
should altogether fail to do justice to ; but its 
beauty and suggestiveness set us upon a train of 
thought which, in connection with the ceremony 
of the morning, we may be pardoned for dwell- 
ing upon in a few words. 

It was not the first nor the last time that 
we had witnessed the Arabs at prayer, and had 
studied with a painter's eye their attitudes of 
devotion, the religious fervor in their faces, and 
their perfect abandon. The charm of the scene 



ARAB WORSHIP. 165 

was in its primitive aspect, and in the absence 
of all the accessories which Europeans are taught 
from their youth up to connect in some way 
with every act of public worship. And who 
could help being struck by the sight of all this 
earnestness, — at these heartfelt prayers ] What 
does the Arab see in this mystery of beauty, in 
its daily recurring splendor and decline? Shall 
we say that the rising and the setting of the sun 
behind the hills may not (to the rude souls of 
men who have learned their all from Mature) 
point out the entrance of that Paradise which 
their simple faith has taught them they shall 
one day enter and possess ? 

If it were possible in these days, when religious 
art assumes the most fantastic forms, to create 
ever so slight a reaction against a school which 
has perhaps held its own too long, — if it were 
not heresy to set forth as the noblest aim for a 
painter, that he should depict the deepest emo- 



166 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

tion, the simplest faith, the most heartfelt devo- 
tion, without the accessories of purple and fine 
linen, without marble columns or gilded shrines, 
without furniture, without Madonnas, and without 
paste, — then we might point confidently to the 
picture before us to aid our words. What if the 
heaven prayed for and the prophet worshipped 
seem to a Christian unorthodox and worse, — 
there is sincerity here, there is faith, devotion, 
ecstasy, adoration. "What more, indeed, does the 
painter hope for ; what does he seek ; and what 
more has he ever found in the noblest work of 
Christian art ] 

If he lack enthusiasm, still, before a scene so 
strange, let him think for a moment what manner 
of worship this of the Arabs is, and contrast their 
system with that of the Vatican. The religion of 
the Arabs is a very striking thing, and its position 
and influence on tjieir lives might put many 
professing Christians to the blush. An honest, 



THE ARAB'S FAITH. 167 

earnest faith is theirs, be it right or wrong. If 
we examine it at all, we find it something more 
than a silly superstition ; we find that it has been 
" a firm belief and hope amongst twelve millions 
of men in Arabia alone, holding its place in their 
hearts for more than twelve hundred years." It 
is a religion of Duty, an acting up to certain fixed 
principles and defined laws of life, untrammelled 
by many ceremonies, unshaken by doubts ; a fol- 
lowing out to the letter the written law, as laid 
clown for them by Mahomet, as the rule and prin- 
ciple of their lives. If the whole system of the 
Mohammedan faith breaks down (as we admit it 
does) on examination, it does not affect our posi- 
tion, namely, that we have here an exhibition of 
religious fervor which seldom reaches to fanaticism, 
and is essentially sincere. Eegarding the scene 
from a purely artistic point of view, we can im- 
agine no more fitting subject for a painter than 
this group of Arabs at their devotions, — Nature 



168 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

their temple, its altar the setting sun, their faces 
towards Mecca, their hearts towards the Prophet, 
their every attitude breathing devotion and faith. 

Setting aside all questions of orthodoxy, regard- 
ing for our particular purpose both civilized and 
uncivilized worshippers under their general relig- 
ious aspect, — how would it " strike that stranger " 
who, descending from another planet, w r ondered 
why, if men's Duty was so clearly placed before 
them, they did not follow it, — how would he 
view the two great phases of religious worship ] 
Whose religion would seem most inspiring, whose 
temple most fitting, whose altar most glorious, 
whose religion the most free from question, — the 
modern and enlightened, intrenched in orthodoxy 
and enthroned in state ; or the benighted and un- 
regenerate, but earnest, nature-loving, and always 
sincere 1 

We shall have perhaps (if we make a serious 
study of these subjects and put our heart into the 



THE ARAB'S FAITH. 169 

work) to unlearn something that we have been 
taught about the steady painting of Madonnas 
and angels in our schools ; but, if we do no more 
than make one or two sketches of such scenes as 
the above, we shall have added to our store of 
knowledge in a rough and ready way, and have 
familiarized ourselves with the sight of what — 
though barbaric — is noble and true. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



KABYLIA. THE FORT NAPOLEON". 



IT was almost impossible to take up a news- 
paper in Algiers, or to converse for five 
minutes in a cafe or at the club, without the 
" question Kabyle " cropping up in some para- 
graph or conversation. Every day there came 
contradictory news about the war, that it would 

really be over to-morrow, or the next day, or 
the next week. It had lasted with more or 
less activity for thirty years, but now at last 
the smouldering embers seemed to be dying 
out. 

The Djurjura Mountains stretching eastward 
into Kabylia, which we knew so well in their 



172 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

peaceful aspect, with, the sun shining upon their 
snow-clad summits from morning till night, were 
still the theatre of war. In the heart of the 
mountains, about sixty miles from Algiers, and at 
a height of 3,000 feet above the sea, the French 
army was busily engaged in building a fortress, 
in order to keep the Kabyles at bay and give 
protection to the colonists ; and whilst this work 
was progressing with wonderful rapidity, the out- 
posts of the army were carrying on a guerilla 
warfare with the unsubdued tribes. Their camps 
were pitched on the various heights, and the 
sound of the morning reveille was generally suc- 
ceeded by the " ping " of the rifle from some con- 
cealed Kabyles, and by a quick return volley 
from the French outposts. 

"We went to the Fort Napoleon at the invi- 
tation of some French officers, who, when they 
wrote to us, imagined (as all French people had 
imagined a hundred times before) that the war 



LES IS SEES. 173 



was over, and that it would be a good opportu- 
nity to visit the camp and the fort, in process of 
construction.* Two easy days' journey on horse- 
back, halting for the night at a caravanserai called 
Les Issers, brought us to Tiziouzou, a small town 
and military depot on the borders of Kabylia, at 
the foot of the mountains, and but a few miles 
from the fort. At Les Issers we slept upon the 
ground, each man by the side of his own horse, 
as there was neither stabling nor sleeping accom- 
modation to be had in the inn, which was crowded, 
before we arrived, with troops and war materiel. 
To reach this, our first night's halting-place, we 
had had some rough riding, ending by fording in 
the evening a rapid river which rose above the 
saddle-girths and nearly upset our active little 
horses. The night was starlight, and we lay down 

* General Randon laid the first stone of the Fort Napo- 
leon in June, 1857. This fort, which occupies an area of 
more than twenty acres, and is built on most irregular 
ground, was built in a few months. 



174 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

about fifty together, with fires burning in a circle 
round us, to prevent any surprise. 

The route from Les Issers to Tiziouzou was 
crowded with baggage-wagons sticking in the 
mud, and with immense droves of camels and 
donkeys on their way to the fort. The late rains 
had almost obliterated the military road (which 
was said to extend all the way from Algiers to 
the Fort Napoleon), and in some places it was 
turned into a river. The greater part of our route 
had been wild and uncultivated, but as we came 
near to Tiziouzou and approached the mountains, 
every valley was luxuriant with vegetation, fig- 
trees and olives grew in abundance, the former 
of enormous size. But nearly every inhabitant 
was French, and we, who had come to sketch and 
to see the Kabyles, were as yet disappointed at 
finding none but French soldiers, European camp- 
followers, and camel-drivers on the way ; and 
when we arrived at Tiziouzou, we were so shut in 



THE ROAD TO, THE FORT. 175 

by mountains on all sides, that even the heights 
of Beni-Eaten were concealed from view. It was 
fortunate that we obtained the shelter of a little 
inn on the night of our arrival, for the rain fell 
steadily in sheets of water, until our wooden house 
was soaked through, and stood like an island in 
the midst of a lake. 

We sent our horses back to Algiers, and carry- 
ing our own knapsacks, set off in the early morn- 
ing to walk up to the fort. A lively cantiniere, 
attached to a regiment of Zouaves camped near 
Tiziouzou, walked with us and led the way, past 
one or two half- deserted Kabyle villages, by a 
short cut to the camp. The military road by 
which the artillery had been brought up was about 
fifteen miles, but by taking the steeper paths we 
must have reduced the distance by more than half. 
At one point of the way the bare mountain-side 
was so steep and slippery with the late rain, that 
it was almost impossible to ascend it ; but some 



176 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

Arabs, with an eye to business worthy of the 
Western world, had stationed themselves here 
with their camels to drag up pedestrians ; a 
camel's tail was let for two sous, and was in 
great request. The latter part of the ascent was 
through forests, and groves of olive and cork 
trees, looking cool and gray amongst the mass 
of rich vegetation, through which we had some- 
times to cut a path. It was a wild walk, but our 
merry little cantiniere was so active and enter- 
taining that we, encumbered with knapsacks, had 
enough to do to keep up with her, and indeed 
to comprehend the rapid little French histories 
that she favored us with. Every now and then 
we heard through the trees the strains of " Partant 
pour la Syne," or the rattle of a regimental drum, 
and came suddenly upon working parties on the 
road, which the army boasts was made practica- 
ble in three months. After about four hours' 
clambering we again emerge upon the road, near 



THE KABYLE WAR. 177 

the summit, and in a few minutes more come in 
sight of the fort and the pretty white tents of the 
camps on the surrounding hills. 

Here we must pause a few minutes, to give a 
short account of the last great expedition against 
the Kabyles in this district in 1857, as related 
by Lieutenant-Colonel Walmisley : — 

" Daylight dawned upon the Kabyle hills on 
the morning of the 24th June, and its light 
streamed over the serried ranks of the second 
division, as, under the command of General Mac- 
Mahon, the head of the column marched out of 
the lines of Aboudid. Before it lay the heights 
of Icheriden, with its village and triple row of 
barricades, behind which the men of the Beni 
Menguillet anxiously watched the progress of the 
foe. The path of the column lay along a moun- 
tain ridge, and it was strange to see that column 
of between six and seven thousand men advan- 
cing quietly and composedly, the birds singing 
8* L 



178 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

around them, the Kabyles crowning every avail- 
able hillock, the hawks and eagles slowly wheel- 
ing in large circles over their heads, and the bright 
rays of the morning sun gleaming on brighter 
bayonets. 

• • • • • 

" The Kabyle barricades remained black and 
silent as ever ; not a bournous was to be seen, 
as the 54th and the Zouaves received orders to 
carry the position at the point of the bayonet. 
Before them lay a ridge covered with brushwood, 
affording capital shelter ; but at about sixty or 
seventy paces from the stockades the brush had 
been cleared away, and now the occasional gleam 
of a bayonet, the report of a musket or two fired 
against the stockade, the loud ringing of the 
trumpets, as they gave forth in inspiriting tones 
the pas de charge, and the wild shouting of the 
men, as they pushed their way forward, told of 
the progress of the attack. 






THE KABJLE WAR. 179 

" Still the same stern, heavy silence reigned 
over the hostile village. Was it indeed de- 
serted, or was it the silence of despair] But 
now the bugle-notes became shriller and more 
exciting, the shots quicker and more steady, 
as, emerging from the bush, the attacking col- 
umn rushed forward to the attack. Sixty 
paces of greensward were before them ; but in- 
stantly, and as if by magic, a thousand reports 
broke the silence of the dark stockades, a wild 
yell rose from their defenders as the hail of lead 
fell on the advancing regiments, and a long line 
of dead marked the advance. The Kabyles lean- 
ing their pieces over the joints of the trees, where 
they were fitted into each other, and through 
crevices and loop-holes, offered little or no mark 
themselves to the shot ; whilst not a ball of theirs 
missed its aim. 

" But the Zouaves were not to be daunted ; 
and leaving the ground dotted with their dead 



180 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

and dying comrades, on they rushed, a wild cheer 
rising from their ranks, and a volley of balls pat- 
tering a reply. Again the line of fire burst from 
the dark stockade, and the advancing column 
withered away. The ground was strewn with 
fallen forms, and the fire of the stockade fell fast 
and sure. The men gave way, seeking the shel- 
ter of the bushes; their officers dashing to the 
front, vainly attempting to lead them on. It was 
useless, — even the sturdy Zouaves refused to 
cross the deadly slope, for to do so was death ; 
on the green slope, across which the balls hur- 
ried fast and thick, lay whole ranks of French 
uniforms. 

" The fire from stockade and bush raged fast 
and furious ; well kept up on the side of the 
French, more deadly on that of the Kabyles, and 
still the men would not advance over the uncovered 
space, for it was certain death. Two thousand 
Kabyle marksmen lined the loop-holes, and the 



THE KABYLE WAR. 181 

balls now began to whiz round the heads of the 
generals and their staff." 

General MacMahon, who was wounded in this 
engagement, at last resorted to shells to dislodge 
the defenders ; the result was successful, and the 
whole ended in a panic. 

"East and furious now became the flight of 
the Kabyles, and all was havoc and confusion. 
The men of the Legion, mixed up with the Zou- 
aves and the 54th, dashed after the fugitives, 
entering the villages with them, and bayoneting 
right and left with savage shouts, whilst down 
the steep sides of the hills, away over the ridges 
to the right and to the left, the waving bour- 
nous might be seen in flight ! " 

The curtain fell upon the Kabyle war soon 
after this action, and large detachments of troops 
were at once told off to build the fort. All 
around, on every promontory and hill, the little 
white tents were scattered thickly, and the sound 



182 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

of the bugle, and the sight of the red kepis of 
the soldiers, prevailed everywhere. But the war 
was practically over, civilians came up from 
Algiers, — some to see, and some to trade, — and 
quite a little colony sprung up. And here, on 
one of the heights shown in our next sketch, 
we establish ourselves again. Whilst Kabyle 
villages still smoulder in the distance, and re- 
venge is deep in the hearts of insurgent tribes, 
"one peaceful English tent" is pitched upon the 
heights of Beni-Eaten, and its occupants devote 
themselves to the uneventful pursuit of studying 
mountain beauty. We endeavor (and with some 
success) to ignore the military element; we listen 
neither to the reveille, nor to the too frequent 
crack of a rifle; our pursuits are not warlike, 
and, judging from the sights and sounds that 
sometimes surround us, we trust they never 
may be. 

The view from this elevation is superb, — 



THE KABYLE MOUNTAINS. 



183 



north, south, east, and west, there is a wondrous 
landscape, but northward especially ; where, far 
above the purple hills, higher than all but a few 
snowy peaks, there stretches a horizontal line of 
blue, that seems almost in the clouds. Nothing 
gives us such a sense of height and distance as 
these accidental peeps of the Mediterranean, and 
nothing could contrast more effectively than the 
snowy peaks in sunlight against the blue sea. 




All this we are able to study in perfect secu- 
rity and with very little interruption ; sketching 



184 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

first one mountain-side clothed with a mass of 
verdure ; another, rocky, barren, and wild ; one 
day an olive-grove, another a deserted Kahyle 
village, and so on, with an infinite variety which 
would only be wearisome in detail. And we 
obtain what is so valuable to an artist, and what 
is supposed to be so rare in Africa, — variety of 
atmospheric effect. It is generally admitted (and 
we should be unwilling to contest the point) 
that English landscape is unrivalled in this re- 
spect, and that it is only form and color that 
we may study with advantage in tropical cli- 
mates ; but it should be remembered that, directly 
we ascend the mountains we lose the still, serene 
atmosphere that has been called the " monotony 
of blue." 

We read often of African sun, but very sel- 
dom of African clouds and wind. To-day we are 
surrounded by clouds below us, which come and 
gather round the mountain-peaks and remain until 



AFRICAN WINDS. 185 

evening. Sometimes, just before sunset, the cur- 
tain will be lifted for a moment, and the hill- 
sides will be in a blaze of gold, — again the 
clouds come round, and do not disperse till 
nightfall;, and when the mountains are once 
more revealed, the moon is up, and they are 
of a silver hue, — the sky immediately above 
remaining quite unclouded. The air is soft 
on these half-clouded days, in spite of our 
height above the sea ; and the showers that 
fall at intervals turn the soil in the valleys 
into a hot-bed for forcing the gigantic vege- 
tation. 

The weather was nearly always fine, and we 
generally found a little military tent (lent to us 
by one of the Staff) sufficient protection and 
shelter, even on this exposed situation. But we 
must not forget the winds that lived in the 
valleys, and came up to where our tents were 
pitched, — sometimes one at a time, sometimes 



186 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

three or four together. Of all things that im- 
pressed us during our stay upon the Kabyle hills, 
the beauty of the clouds, the purple tints upon 
the mountains, and the wind, will be remembered 
best. It is a common phrase, to speak of " scat- 
tering to the four winds " ; but here the four winds 
came and met near our little camp, and sometimes 
made terrible havoc with our belongings. They 
came suddenly one day, and took up a tent, and 
flung it at a man and killed him; another time 
they came sighing gently, as if a light breeze were 
all we need prepare for, and in five minutes we 
found ourselves in the thick of a fight for our 
possessions, if not for our lives. And with the 
wind there came sometimes such sheets of rain, 
that turned the paths into watercourses, and car- 
ried shrubs and trees down into the valley; all 
this happening whilst the sea was calm in the 
distance, and the sun was shining fiercely on 
the plains. These were rough days, to be ex- 



PICTURES. 187 



pected in late autumn and early spring, but not 
to be missed for a little personal discomfort, for 
Algeria has not been seen without a mountain 
storm. 

Before leaving Kabylia, we will take one or 
two leaves from our note-book ; just to picture 
to the reader, who may be more interested in 
what is going on at the Fort than in the vari- 
ous phases of the landscape, the rather incon- 
gruous elements of which our little society is 
made up. 

Around the camp this evening there are groups 
of men and women standing, that bring forcibly 
to the mind those prints of the early patriarchs 
from which we are apt to take our first, and per- 
haps most vivid, impressions of Eastern life ; and 
we cannot wonder at French artists attempting 
to illustrate Scriptural scenes from incidents in 
Algeria. There are Jacob and Joseph, as one 
might imagine them, to the life ; Euth in the 



188 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

fields, and Rachel by the well ; and there is a 
patriarch coming down the mountain, with a light 
about his head, as the sun's last rays burst upon 
him, that Herbert might well have seen when 
he was painting Moses with the tables of the law. 
The effect is accidental, but it is perfect in an 
artistic sense, from the solemnity of the man, the 
attitude of the crowd of followers, the grand moun- 
tain forms which are partially lit up by gleams 
of sunset, and the sharp shadows cast by the 
throng. 

This man may have been a warrior chief, or 
the head of a tribe; he was certainly the head 
of a large family, who pressed round him to an- 
ticipate his wants and do him honor. His chil- 
dren seemed to be everywhere about him ; they 
were his furniture, they warmed his tent and kept 
out the wind, they begged for him, prayed for 
him, and generally helped him on his way. In 
the Koran there is a saying of similar purport 



A PATRIARCH. 189 



to the words " happy is the man that hath his 
quiver full of them," — this one had his quiver 
full of them indeed, and whether he had ever 
done much to deserve the blessing, he cer- 
tainly enjoyed it to the full.* Looked upon 
as a colored statue, he was, in some respects, a 
perfect type of beauty, strength, and dignified 
repose, — what we might fitly call a " study," 
as he sat waiting, whilst the women prepared 
his evening meal ; but whether from a moral 
point of view he quite deserved all the respect 
and deference that was paid to him, is another 
question. 

As a picture, as we said before, he was mag- 
nificent, and there was a regal air with which 
he disposed the folds of his bournous, which we, 

* How many a man is sheltered from the winds of the 
world by a grove of sleek relations, who surround him and 
keep him from harm ! Such a man has never really tried the 
outer world, and has but a second-hand experience of its 
troubles. 



190 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

clad in the costume of advanced civilization, could 
not but admire and envy. He had the advan- 
tage of us in every way, and made us feel it 
acutely. He had a splendid arm, and we could 
see it ; the fine contour and color of his head 
and neck were surrounded by white folds, but 
not concealed. His head was not surmounted 
with a battered "wide-awake," his neck was not 
bandaged as if it were wounded, his feet were 
not misshapen clumps of leather, his robes — 
But we have no heart to go further into detail. 
There is a " well-dressed " French gentleman stand- 
ing near this figure ; and there is not about him 
one graceful fold, one good suggestive line, one 
tint of color grateful to the eye, or one re- 
deeming feature in his (by contrast) hideous tout 
ensemble. 

These are every-day truths, but they strike us 
sometimes with a sort of surprise ; we have dis- 
covered no new thing in costume, and nothing 



AN ARAB STEED, 191 

worth telling; but the sudden and humiliating 
contrast gives our artistic sensibilities a shock, 
and fills us with despair. 

A little way removed there is a warrior on 
horseback at prayers, his hands outstretched, his 
face turned towards the sun. It is as grand a 
picture as the last, but it does not bear examina- 
tion. He came and sat down afterwards, to 
smoke, close to our tent, and we regret to say 
that he was extremely dirty, and in his habits 
rather cruel. There were red drops upon the 
ground where his horse had stood, and his spur 
was a terrible instrument to contemplate ; in the 
enthusiasm of a noble nature he had ridden his 
delicate locomotive too hard, and had sometimes 
forgotten to give it a feed. It was a beautiful, 
black Arab steed, but it wanted grooming sadly ; 
its feet were cracked and spread from neglect, 
and its whole appearance betokened rough usage. 
Perhaps this was an exceptional case, perhaps 



192 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

not ; but to the scandal of those whose romantic 
picture of the Arab in his tent with his children 
and his steed are amongst the most cherished 
associations, we are bound to confess that we 
have seen as much cruelty as kindness bestowed 
by the Arabs and Kabyles on their horses, and 
incline to the opinion that they are, as a rule, 
anything but tender and loving to their four- 
footed friends. 

The Kabyles came round our tents in the 
morning before leaving, and the last we saw of 
our model patriarch he was flying before an en- 
raged vivandiere, who pursued him down the 
hill with a dishcloth. He had been prowling 
about since dawn, and had forgotten the distinc- 
tion between "meuni" and "tuum." 

It has been said that there is "no such tiling 
as Arab embarrassment, and no such dignity as 
Arab dignity n ; but the Arab or the Kabyle, as 
we hinted in a former chapter, aj^pears to great 



"THE MAIL" 193 



disadvantage in contact with the French, and 
seems to lose at once in morale. 

Another day, there is a flutter in our little 
camp, for "the mail" has come in, in the per- 
son of an active young orderly of Zouaves, who, 
leaving the bulk of his charge to come round 
by the road, has anticipated the regular delivery 
by some hours, scaling the heights with the 
agility of a cat, and appearing suddenly in our 
midst. If he had sprung out of the earth he 
could not have startled us much more, and if he 
had brought a message that all the troops were 
to leave Africa to-morrow, he could scarcely have 
been more welcome. 

And what has he brought to satisfy the crowd 
of anxious faces that assemble round the hut, 
dignified by the decoration of a pasteboard eagle 
and the inscription " Bureau de Poste " ? It was 
scarcely as trying a position for an official as 



194 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

that at our own Post-office at Sebastopol in Cri- 
mean days, although there was eagerness and 
crowding enough to perplex any distributor; but 
it was very soon over, in five minutes letters and 
papers were cast aside, and boredom had recom- 
menced with the majority. It was the old 
story, — the old curse of Algeria doing its work ; 
the French officers are too near home to care 
much for "news," and hear too frequently from 
Paris (twice a week) to attach much importance 
to letters. ^Newspapers were the "pieces de re- 
sistance," but there was not much news in "La 
JPresse" and its feuilletoii consisted of two or 
three chapters of a translation of Dickens's " Mar- 
tin Chuzzlewit " ; there was the " Moniteur" with 
lists of promotions in the army, and the usual 
announcement that "Xapoleon, by the grace 
of God and the national will," would levy new 
taxes upon the people ; there was a provincial 
paper, containing an account of the discovery of 



FRENCH OFFICERS. 195 

some ruins near Carcassonne ; there was " Le 
Follet " for " my lady commandant" and a few 
other papers with illustrated caricatures and 
conundrums. 

Some of the letters were amusing, as we heard 
them read aloud ; one was too quaint not to 
mention : it was from a boot-maker in Paris to 
his dear, long-lost customer on the Kabyle hills. 
He "felt that he was going to die," and prayed 
" ATsieu le Lieutenant" to order a good supply 
of boots for fear of any sudden accident; "no 
one else could make such boots for Monsieur." 
And so on, including subjects of about equal 
importance, with the latest Parisian gossip, and 
intelligence of a new piece at the "Varietes." 
One other letter we may mention, that came up 
by the same post to a member of that little 
band perched like eagles on the heights ; it was 
also unimportant, but from home, in England; 
the burden of it was this, — " Broadtouch " had 



196 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

stretched ten feet of canvas for a painting of 
one rolling wave, and " Interstice " had studied 
the texture of a nutshell until his eyes were 
dim! 

We finish the evening as usual with dominoes 
and coffee ; enjoying many a long and delightful 
chit-chat with our military friends. These pleas- 
ant, genial, but rather unhappy gentlemen do 
not "talk shop " ; it is tabooed in conversation, as 
strictly as at the " Rag " : but the stamp of ban- 
ishment is upon their faces unmistakably, and 
if they do speak of the service in answer to a 
question, it is in language that seems to say, 
"All ye who enter here leave Hope behind." 
But opinions happily differ very widely ; we were 
reluctant to leave the Fort. 

The Imperial Eagle crowned the heights of 
Beni-Raten, the red kepis was dotted thickly 
amongst the green foliage, the bugle was heard 
from several hills, as we went down the military 



FRENCH OFFICERS. 197 

road for the last time.' It was late in the even- 
ing before we arrived at Tiziouzou, and the last 
figure that we saw in Kabylia — the last man 
that dwells in our recollection — was neither Arab 
nor Kabyle. In the half light it might have been 
some antediluvian bird that haunted this region \ 
at any rate it added to our experience of the " con- 
fusion of styles " with which this country abounds. 




WINTER SWALLOWS. 



CHAPTEE IX. 
"winter swallows." 

"Oh que l'hirondelle est bien la type de la vraie sagesse, 
elle qui a su effacer de son existence, ces longs hivers qui 
glacent et engourdissent ! Des que le soleil commence a de- 
croitre, sitot que les plant es jaunissent et qu'aux chaudes 
haleines du Zephyr succedent les froides rafales de l'aquilon, 
elle s'envole prudemment a tire d'ailes, vers les douces re- 
gions embaumees du Midi." 

WE come down the hills and back to Al- 
giers, to find the winter in full bloom, 
and the " winter swallows " in great force. In 
fact, so full of bustle is the town, and so fre- 
quent is the sight of English faces, and so familiar 
the sound of voices, that it hardly seems like the 
place we had left a few weeks since. 

It has been said that English people love sun- 



200 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

shine and blue sky more than any other nation, 
and that the dwellers under the " ciel nebuleuse 
du nord " will go anywhere to seek a brighter 
clime ; and it is a fact, the importance of which 
is hardly realized, that the African sun is produ- 
cing a crop of residents that is taking firm root 
in the soil in spite of siroccos, in spite of earth- 
quakes, without a thought of colonization in the 
strict sense of the word, and without, it must be 
added, any particular love for the French people. 
As the visitors and tourists are increasing, they 
are naturally rather vulgarizing our favorite places. 
Thus we hear of picnics at the Bouzareah, of balls 
at Mustapha, of " trips " to Blidah by railway, and 
of " excursions to the gorge of La Chiffa and 
back " in one day. An amusing chapter might 
be written upon Algiers from the traveller's point 
of view, but one or two touches will suffice to 
show the easy and familiar terms on which our 
countrymen and countrywomen invade this strong- 



" WINTER SWALLOWS." 201 

hold of the French; once the "city of pirates" 
and the terror of Mediterranean waters. 

There is the American traveller, who, having 
" done Europe," finds Algiers, of course, rather 
" slow " by contrast ; and there is the very matter- 
of-fact traveller, who finds it all vanity, and says, 
"Take ever so copious a stock of illusions with 
you to the bright Orient, and within half an hour 
after landing you are as bankrupt as a bank of 
deposit ; . . . . and the end of it all is, that this 
city of the ' Arabian Nights' turns out to be as 
unromantic as Seven Dials." There are lady trav- 
ellers, who (enjoying special advantages by reason 
of their sex, and seeing much more than English- 
men of Moorish interiors) are perhaps best fitted 
to write books about this country ; there are 
proselytizing ladies, who come with a mission, and 
end by getting themselves and their friends into 
trouble by distributing tracts amongst the Moors ; 

and there are ladies who (when their baggage is 
9* 



202 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

detained at one of the ports) endeavor to break 
down the barriers of official routine in an unex- 
rjected way. " The douane did not choose to 
wake rip and give us our luggage," writes one, 
" it was such a lazy douane \ and though I went 
again and again and said pretty things to the 
gendarmes, it was of no use." 

Another form of invasion is less polite, but it 
has been submitted to with tolerable grace on 
more than one occasion. Here is the latest in- 
stance, taken from " Under the Palms," by the 
Hon. Lewis Wingfield. 

" Being anxious," he says, " to obtain a sketch 
of one of the quaint streets of the upper town, 
I wandered one morning up its dark alleys and 
intricate by-ways ; and wishing to establish my- 
self at a window, I knocked at a promising door, 
and was answered by a mysterious voice from 
behind a lattice ; the door opened of itself, and 
I marched up stairs unmindful of evil. In the 






" WINTER SWALLOWS:' 203 

upper court I was instantly surrounded by a troup 
of women in the picturesque private dress of the 
Moorish ladies, unencumbered with veil or yashmak. 

"These ladies dragged at my watch-chain and 
pulled my hair, until, finding myself in such 
very questionable society, I beat a hasty retreat, 
flying down stairs six steps at a time, slamming 
the doors in the faces of the houris, and event- 
ually reaching the street in safety, while sundry 
slow Mussulmans wagged their beards and said 
that Christian dogs did not often enter such 
places with impunity." 

It is pleasant to see with what good-tempered 
grace both the Moors and the French take this 
modern invasion. We settle down for the win- 
ter here and build and plant vineyards, and 
make merry in the same romping fashion that 
we do in Switzerland. We write to England 
about it as if the country belonged to us, and 
of the climate as if we had been the discoverers 



204 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

of its charms. But it is all so cosey and genial, 
and so much a matter of course, that we are apt to 
forget its oddity; we have friends who speak of 
Algiers with positive delight, whose faces brighten 
at the very mention of its name, and who always 
speak of going there as of "going home." 

We have principally confined our remarks to 
places near Algiers, omitting all mention of Oran 
and Constantine, because it is impossible to 
work to much purpose if we travel about, and 
these places are worthy of distinct and separate 
visits. The longest journey that we would sug- 
gest to artists to make in one winter would be 
to the cedar forests of Teniet-el-Had, because the 
scenery is so magnificent, and the forms of the 
cedars themselves are perhaps the wildest and 
most wonderful to be met with in any part of the 
world. Hitherto, almost the only sketches that 
we have seen of this mountain forest have been 
by our own countrymen and countrywomen, for 
French artists do not as a rule go far from Algiers. 



FRENCH ARTISTS. 205 

With a few notable exceptions,* our experi- 
ence of the works of Frenchmen in Algiers has 
been anything but inspiring ; we have known 
these artists closeted for weeks, — copying and 
recopying fanciful desert scenes, such as camels 
dying on sandy plains, under a sky of the heavi- 
est opaque blue, and with cold gray shadows 
upon the ground, — drawing imaginary Mau- 
resques on impossible house-tops, and, in short, 
working more from fancy than from facts ; pro- 
ducing, it may be, most salable pictures, but 
doing themselves and their clientelles no other 
good thereby. It seems ungracious to speak 
thus of people from whom we invariably re- 
ceived civility and kindness ; but the truth re- 
mains, we found them hard at work on " pot- 
boilers " for exportation, and doing, like the 
photographers, a flourishing trade. 

* We shall not be accused of alluding in this category to 
such painters as the late Horace Vernet, or to Gerome and 
others who study here in winter time. 



206 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

We should endeavor to spend most of our 
time in the country, if we wish to make pro- 
gress. If we stay in Algiers we shall of course 
be liable to some interruptions ; we shall be too 
comfortable and perhaps become too luxurious. 
We must not dream away our time on a Tur- 
key carpet, or on our terrasse, charming though 
the view may be. There is too much scent of 
henna, too strong a flavor of coffee and tobacco, 
there are, in short, too many of the comforts of 
life ; we had better be off to the hills, where 
the air is cooler, and where we can live a free 
life under canvas for a while.* 

A few months spent amongst the mountains 

* It may not be thought very practical to suggest much 
sketching in the open air, as the light is generally consid- 
ered too trying, and the glare too great, for any very success- 
ful work in color. But the tropical vegetation in Algeria 
gives continual shade and shelter, and the style of architec- 
ture, with cool open arcades to the houses, is admirably 
adapted for work ; and, failing the ordinary means of shelter, 
much may be done under a large umbrella or an ordinary 
military tent. 



NATURE AND ART. 207 

has a wonderfully bracing effect on Europeans, 
bacause both the eye and the mind are satisfied 
and refreshed ; although it is a curious fact to 
note that on the uneducated such scenes have 
little or no influence. "We shall not easily forget 
"the splendid comet of Arab civilization that 
has left such a trail of light behind it," but 
cannot help remarking that neither the Arab in 
a state of nature, nor the Moor surrounded by 
every refinement and luxury, seems to be much 
influenced by the grace and beauty around them ; 
and in this they do not stand alone, for it is, as 
we said, a notable fact, that contact with what 
is beautiful in scenery or in art is of itself of 
little worth. 

What shall we say of the Sicilian peasant- 
girl, born and bred on the heights of Taor- 
mina, — what of the Swiss girl who spends her 
days knee-deep in newly mown hay 1 Does beau- 
tiful scenery seem to inspire them with noble 



208 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

thoughts, — does being " face to face with Na- 
ture" (as the phrase goes) appear to give them 
refined tastes, or to elevate their ideas] Does it 
seem to lead to cleanliness, to godliness, or any- 
other virtue] The answer is almost invariably, 
" No " ; they must be educated to it, and neither 
the present race of Arabs or Moors are so edu- 
cated. They do not seem to appreciate the works 
of their fathers, and will, probably before long, 
fall into the way of dressing themselves and build- 
ing dwellings after the style of their conquerors. 
With Europeans it is just the reverse, and 
the most educated and refined amongst us are 
learning more and more to value what Eastern 
nations are casting off. "We submit to the fash- 
ions of our time not without murmurs, which 
are sounds of hope; we put up with a hideous 
costume and more hideous streets, — from habit 
or necessity, as the case may be, — but even cus- 
tom will not altogether deaden the senses to a 



NATURE AND ART. 209 

love for the beautiful. In costume this is espe- 
cially noticeable. What is it that attracts the 
largest audiences to " burlesque" representations 
at our theatres'? Xot the buffoonery, but the 
spectacle. The eye, robbed of its natural' food, 
seeks it in a number of roundabout ways, — but 
it seeks it. What made the American people 
crowd to Ristori's performances in Xew York 
over and over again? Kot the novelty, not alone 
for the sake of being able to say that they had 
been there, but for the delight to the eye in 
contemplating forms of classic beauty, and the 
delight to the ear in hearing the poetry of the 
most musical language in the world nobly spoken, 
although but few of the audience could under- 
stand a word. It was a libel upon the people to 
suggest that their attending these performances 
was affectation; it was an almost unconscious 
drawing out of that love for the beautiful which 
is implanted somewhere in every human breast. 

N 




CONCLUSION. 



CHAPTEE X. 

CONCLUSION. 

IF the foregoing sketches have seemed to some 
of our readers a thought too slight and dis- 
cursive, and to be wanting in detail, it is because, 
perhaps, they have reflected a little too naturally 
the habit of a painter's mind, and have followed 
out the principle of outdoor sketching, which is 
to "hit off" as accurately as possible the various 
points of interest that come under observation, 
and, in doing so, to give color rather than detail, 
and to aim principally at the rendering of atmos- 
phere and eifect. 

But for this, perhaps, most readers will be 
thankful, and for two reasons. First, because it 



212 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

is a fact that English and American people care 
little or nothing for Algeria as a colony, — that 
they never have cared, and probably never will. 
Second, because, in spite of the assertion of a late 
writer that " Algeria is a country virtually un- 
known," we believe that the reading public has 
been inundated with books of travel and statistics 
on this subject. 

It is only in its picturesque aspect, and as a 
winter residence for invalids, that Algiers will 
ever claim much interest for English people ; and 
even in picturesqueness it falls far short of other 
cities of the East. There is nothing in costume 
to compare with the bazaars of Constantinople, or 
in architecture to the by-streets of Trebizond ; but 
Algeria is much more accessible, and that is our 
reason for selecting it. And it has one special at- 
traction, in which it stands almost alone, namely, 
that here we may see the two great tides of civili- 
zation — the primitive and modern, the East and 



CONCLUSION. 213 



the West — meet and mingle without limit and 
without confusion. There is no violent collision 
and no decided fusion ; but the general result is 
peaceful, and we are enabled to contemplate it at 
leisure, and have such intimate and quiet inter- 
course with the Oriental as is nowhere else to 
be met with, we believe, in the world. 

In fine, for artists Algiers seems perfect ; a 
cheap place of residence with few " distractions," 
without many taxes or cares ; with extraordinary 
opportunities for the study of ^Nature in her 
grandest aspects, and of character, costume, and 
architecture of a good old type. 

But what they really gain by working here is 
not easily written down, nor to be explained to 
others ; nor is it all at once discovered by them- 
selves. It has not been dinned into their ears 
by rote, or by rule, but rather inhaled, and (if 
we may so express it) taken in with the atmos- 
phere they breathe. If they have not produced 



214 ARTISTS AND ARABS. 

anything great or noble, they have at least in- 
fused more light and nature into their work, and 
have done something to counteract the tendency 
to that sickly sentimentality and artificialism 
that is the curse of modern schools. 

We have been led to insist, perhaps a little 
too earnestly, on the good effects of sound work 
on a painter's mind, by the thought of what some 
of our foremost artists are doing at the present 
time. When painters of the highest aim and 
most refined intelligence seem tending towards 
a system of mere decorative art ; when Millais 
paints children, apparently, to display their dress, 
and devotes his great powers as a colorist to 
dexterous imitation ; when Leighton cultivates a 
style of refined Platonism which is not Attic and 
is sometimes scarcely human ; when other painters 
of celebrity, that we need scarcely name, spend 
their lives upon the working out of effective de- 



CONCLUSION. 215 



tails ; when the modern development of what is 
called Pre-Eaphaelitism seems to remove us far- 
ther than ever from what should be the aim of 
a great painter, — we may be pardoned for insist- 
ing upon the benefits of change of air and change 
of scene. 

But not only to artists and amateurs, — to 
those fortunate people whose time and means are 
as much at their own disposal as the genii of 
Aladdin's lamp ; to those who can get " ordered 
abroad " at the season when it is most pleasant 
to go ; to those who live at high pressure for 
half the year, and need a change, not so much 
perhaps from winter's gloom as from the clouds 
that linger on the mind's horizon ; to all who 
seek a new sensation, we would say once more, 
— pay a visit to the " city of pirates," to the 
diamond set in emeralds, on the African shore. 

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